May 13, 2020 • 35 mins
In 1893, President Grover Cleveland noticed a rough spot on the roof of his mouth. This turned into a medical situation and led to a daring surgery that was kept secret from the public for decades.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. So when
I was researching our recent two parter on emergency medicine,
I stumbled across the line about the secret surgery that
(00:24):
Grover Cleveland had while he was in office, and I thought, well,
that goes on the list. As soon as you mentioned
it to me, I was like, that sounds amazing, and
I started just kind of side reading about it, even
while I was still working on that episode, because I
was so intrigued, and the more I learned about it,
the more fascinated I became. So that is what we
were talking about today. A quick heads up for the
(00:47):
very squeamish. We're going to talk a little bit about
surgery here, and there will be some details just for
like to contextualize what an achievement this whole thing was.
But we will not get super duper graphic, like I
would only say, worry about it if you are very,
very squeamish. So today we're going to talk about events
that happened during Grover Cleveland's second term as president. He's
(01:09):
the only president in the US who have served two terms,
but not consecutively. He started his first term after being
sworn in on March fourth, five, and that first term
was really busy. He vetoed four hundred fourteen bills during it,
including aid packages to farmers who needed literal seed money
after the drought had destroyed their crops and left them
(01:30):
without seed for the next planting cycle. But Cleveland wrote
that bailing out the farmers would quote weaken the sturdiness
of our national character. He also got married in June
of eighteen eighty six. That was to twenty one year
old Francis Fulsom. He had known Francis, who was twenty
eight years younger than he was, since she was a child.
He had been good friends with her father. Francis was
(01:52):
the youngest first lady in US history, and she was
vastly different from her husband. She charmed virtually everyone because
she was very kind and witty. Uh Grover, on the
other hand, could be brusque and prone to outrage. The
president became so frustrated by the constant press coverage that
he and his bride got his newlyweds. He started writing
(02:16):
angry letters to various newspapers. Uh. Yeah, he was not
enthused with the President General for a variety of reasons.
But Francis, I mean from the moment she arrived in
the Executive Mansion because it was not being called the
White House yet at that point, like the entire staff
sort of fell in love with her and would do
anything for her. And part of that charm of hers
(02:37):
was why reporters were constantly following them, because everyone was
really fascinated by her and adored her. When Cleveland ran
for re election in he lost to Benjamin Harrison, and
Cleveland actually won the popular vote but lost in the
electoral college. And as the Cleveland's left the Executive Mansion,
Francis reportedly told the staff members to take care of
(03:00):
the furniture and remember where everything was because they were
going to be back in four years. And that is
a mighty bold exit line, but she was not wrong.
During the four years after he left office, Grover Cleveland
moved to New York City. He dabbled in law practice,
but slowly found himself being drawn back into politics. The
(03:20):
ninety mid term elections had seen a lot of Democratic
victories and that made him think it would be worth
running again, and he believed that the quote dangerous and
reckless experiment of shifting so much financial backing into silver
had opened up the door for a pro gold candidate
like himself. We'll be talking more about that in just
a bit. And this wasn't incidentally a position that everyone,
(03:43):
even within his party, was in agreement with. There was
a large chunk of the Democratic Party at the time
that favored the moves that had been made into favoring silver,
and there were plenty of predictions that, in being so
assertive of his stance on the matter, was probably gonna
cost Grover Cleveland the nomination, but it did not. The
campaign itself was actually quiet. Harrison's wife was ill with
(04:05):
tuberculosis and he did not want to be on the
campaign trail. Cleveland thought it would be odd to campaign
when everyone knew that the president couldn't because of a
family illness, and that ultimately ended with with Caroline Harrison's
death in October. So she died not long before the election.
Due largely to the issue of the national budget, Cleveland
(04:28):
one and Harrison seemed pretty relieved about that. And this
actually created a unique situation because Grover Cleveland then had
to discuss the presidential transition as he entered office, with
President Benjamin Harrison in an exact role reversal of what
had happened when Cleveland left office after his first term
four years prior, and it was Harrison who had to
(04:49):
come to him to work out the details regarding the
handover of power. So to contextualize the situation that Grover
Cleveland was facing during the second term, the nation was
in the middle of a financial crisis. There had been
several banking panics in the decades leading up to the
eighteen nineties, but the panic of eighteen ninety three was
(05:10):
much larger in scope that caused deeper fears of instability
in the US than the previous two had done. Those
earlier panics had taken place in eighteen eighty four and
eighteen ninety Starting several years before eighteen ninety three, there
had been a severe dip in the gold reserves held
by the U. S. Treasury. In eighteen ninety the U. S.
Treasury had a hundred and ninety million dollars in gold.
(05:33):
In eighteen ninety three, that number had dwindled to one million,
and the cause of that dip is related to some
of the story that we told in our previous episode
about silver magnate James G. Fair. As Fair and his
fellow silver kings were amassing huge fortunes in silver, and
as gold was getting harder to find, there was this
shift in thinking that silver might be a more worthwhile
(05:56):
monetary standard than gold. Also, in eighteen nine, to the
Sherman Silver Purchase Act was passed. This law called for
the US Treasury to start making more significant investments in
silver acquisition. That led to fears that the United States
would abandon the gold standard, the system by which treasury
notes were directly linked to gold value and could be
(06:19):
exchanged for that amount of gold. As a consequence, the
demand for gold skyrocketed as people traded in their treasury
notes before the value could become unstable. This was almost
like a rush on the bank, except with the Federal Treasury. Yes,
but there were also runs on the bank because this
situation kind of folded in on itself. As the treasuries
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gold dwindled, there were concerns that there was going to
be a freeze put on the ability to exchange notes
for their value in gold, and that possibility only drove
people to do it more and then there were runs
on banks throughout the country because nervous account holders, thinking
the economy was going to collapse, wanted to withdraw all
their fun Additionally, in the eighteen eighties, a number of
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things happened that would impact US finances in the eighteen nineties.
For one, a drought started in the late eighteen eighties
that severely impacted the farming industry, especially in the Midwest.
Many farmers were unable to pay their debts because of
the losses that were incurred and the value of their
land dropped. And at the same time, the eighteen eighties
had been this period of really rapid economic expansion in
(07:26):
the US. Railroads and mining operations were big drivers to
this economic expansion. But as a consequence, both of these
industries grew really rapidly to the point that they were
beyond realistic financial sustainability. Was they were speculating on future
growth with way over inflated projections. On February twenty eight,
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nine three, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad declared bankruptcy, and
this signal to the entire nation if anybody was in
doubt up to that point that the situation was really dire.
Grover Cleveland was sworn in to office for his second
term just ten days later on March fourth. While the
usual events associated with the inauguration day did take place,
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that was the swearing in ceremony, the parade, which included
women for the first time, and the inaugural ball. Attendance
at all of this was really low. It was an
awful day weather wise. It was windy, with some sleep,
but more than anything, the country was just not in
the mood to party. Yeah, there are stories of like
all of these Grover Cleveland souvenirs stands being like all
(08:30):
over Washington, d C. Which we've ever been to an
inauguration day, that's very common, and like nobody was buying.
They were just standing there, going, I guess we're gonna
have a lot of Grover Cleveland merchandise. Forever Cleveland's administration
set to work on the problems that it had inherited immediately,
and this was of course a huge undertaking. As the
finances of the nation teetered in uncertainty, the newly sworn
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in president was dealing with not just railroad closures, but
also banks failing. As we said, unemployment, really rocky, stock market,
and foreign investors that were also becoming nervous and taking
their money out of US interests. On April, the President
authorized the following statement, which circulated widely in papers around
the country. The statement is pretty long, So, Tracy, do
(09:15):
you want to alternate on it? Oh, we can do that.
I'll do this first bit quote. The inclination on the
part of the public to accept newspaper reports concerning the
intentions of those charged with the management of our national
finances seems to justify my emphatic contradiction of the statement
that the redemption of any kind of treasury notes except
(09:36):
in gold, has at any time been determined upon or
contemplated by the Secretary of the Treasury or any other
member of the present administration. The President and his Cabinet
are absolutely harmonious, and the determination to exercise every power
conferred upon them to maintain the public credit, to keep
(09:57):
the public faith, and to preserve the parity. But sween
gold and silver, and between all financial obligations of the government,
it goes on. While the law of e. T. Ninety
forcing the purchase of a fixed amount of silver every month,
provides that the Secretary of the Treasury, in his discretion,
may redeem in either gold or silver the treasury notes
(10:17):
given in payment of silver purchases. Yet the declaration of
the policy of the government to maintain the parity between
the two medals seems so clearly to regulate this discretion
as to dictate their redemption in gold, and it concludes quote,
of course, perplexities and difficulties have grown out of an
unfortunate financial policy which we found in vogue, and embarrassments
(10:40):
have arisen from ill advised financial legislation confronting us at
every turn. But with cheerful confidence among the people and
a patriotic disposition to cooperate, the threatened dangers will be averted,
pending a legislative return to a better and sounder financial plan.
The strong credit of the country is unimpaired, and the
(11:01):
good sense of our people, which has never failed in
time of need, is at hand to save us from disaster.
So with this whole statement, Cleveland was really pushing to
usher in the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act.
That was a move that he was making in the
hopes of regaining some stability during the crisis. So as
(11:21):
this was happening, there was a whole other situation playing
out in Grover Cleveland's wife outside of the political realm,
and we will talk about that right after a quick
sponsor break. So, as we said before the break, as
all of this was playing out with the panic, and
(11:41):
as Cleveland was working to steer the nation through that
financial panic, he had a more personal crisis brewing. He
was soon to be a father, although that was not
publicly known at the time uh and was not considered
a crisis, but his wife, Francis, was two months pregnant
when President Cleveland took his second oath of office. But
the thing that would become more pressing was something that
(12:02):
the president discovered eleven days after that April statement about
repealing the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. On May five, he
noticed a rough spot on the roof of his mouth,
but really deep in the midst of running a country
that was in a precarious state. He did not do
anything about this initially, but over the next six weeks
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that rough spot turned into a lump that got bigger. Reportedly,
the president was often up at night because of it,
although whether that was from pain or from simply worrying
about the situation is a little bit of an issue
of speculation. He actually had his wife, Francis, look at it,
and she was, as she put it, alarmed when I
saw it, and so she made the decision that they
(12:44):
had to get a doctor to look at it immediately.
The doctor was their regular physician, Doctor Joseph Decatur Bryant.
Dr Bryant was their family physician, but he also specialized
in oral tumors, so it makes sense that Francis would
reach outside the government's presidential reas horses and get him involved.
Francis wrote to Dr Bryant on June to tell him
(13:05):
that there was some sort of problem on the roof
of her husband's mouth and that she would like to
speak with the doctor the next day. Francis had errands
on the nineteenth that took her to Jersey City, and
she asked for a meeting there and their brief visit,
she told Dr Bryant the details of this gross appearance
and also that she was quite worried about it. The
meeting ended with Bryant planning a trip to Washington, d C.
(13:28):
To examine the president. Yeah, there are actually some theories
that probably um when Grover Cleveland took office that he
would have asked Bryant because he was a trusted family
friend and had been their family doctor to become the
presidential doctor, but Bryant didn't want to leave his practice
in New York. But there was even while Francis was
(13:50):
meeting with Dr Bryant, another doctor on the case, The
president's dentist had seen the legion and so he contacted
the president's doctor about it. That physician was Dr Robert M. O'Reilly,
and so he had examined the president's mouth and he
found that growth quite worrying as well. He wanted to
have tissue from the growth tested, but without anyone knowing
(14:11):
that the sample had come from the president's person, so
he took a scraping and he sent it as an
anonymous sample to an army lab. While the President's name
was not on the sample, it did have a note
that it was an incredibly important specimen, and that led
pathologist Dr William Welch to suspect that it was a
sample of Grover Cleveland's tissue. That probably made it a
(14:33):
lot more unpleasant for him to come to the conclusion
at the end of this examination that the sample was
from a malignant tumor. And as that lab examination was
happening of the tissue. Dr Bryant had arrived in Washington
and had seen President Cleveland himself. He described the tumor
to his patient as quote, a bad looking tenant, and
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he told him that he should have it removed and
very soon. So, of course this was terrible news, and
not just because the president had a frightening cancerous growth
that could jeopardize his health or maybe his life. Also
because cancer was really a pr nightmare at this point.
People wouldn't even say the word cancer if they could
avoid it in any way. They would use other euphemisms
(15:16):
just to keep the name out of their mouths. This was,
of course, almost a hundred and thirty years ago. The
medical establishments understanding of cancer was a lot less robust
than it is today, and they were not nearly as
many treatment options. Saying someone had cancer at the time
was almost like saying they were already dead. Society was
just downright phobic about it, and there was serious stigma
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around it. So for a president, and one only just
a few months into his term, to have cancer was
the kind of news that could cause a panic in
the midst of an already existing financial panic, political adversaries
and even those with whom the President had tentative ally
ship could use that kind of information against him, and
(16:00):
his effort to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act could
be completely ruined if people thought that he was in
a weak in physical state. Dr Bryant thought the best
course of treatment for President Cleveland was surgery. He and
Dr O'Reilly discussed the matter and then met with the
President and the President's Secretary of War and close friend
that was Dan Lamont. This quartet of men agreed right
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off the bat that the whole matter had to be
kept entirely under wraps. They were planning to do this surgery, though,
so keeping its secret was a really complicated proposal. They
had to perform the procedure somewhere very very private. That
automatically meant not a hospital, and it had to be
done entirely with incisions inside the President's mouth so that
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no external scars would give the truth away. This also meant,
and Grover Cleveland was apparently adamant about this, that they
could not shave his mustache. Uh. And while Cleveland's summer
home in Massachusetts was introduced as a possible location for
the surgery. It was pretty quickly dismissed because the press
was often lurking nearby, especially if they knew the President
(17:05):
was there. Eventually, the President introduced a very novel possibility.
He could have the surgery on board the Oneida, a
yacht owned by his friend Elias Benedict and that the
two had often taken out for fishing trips. The use
of a boat was of course super risky, but because
Cleveland had been on that boat many times, it would
arouse zero suspicions for him to take a trip aboard it.
(17:28):
And while the doctors pressed for an immediate surgery, the
President needed time to put some things in order before
he could do it. This meeting took place on June,
and the President agreed that he would be ready on
July one. In the meantime, Dr O'Reilly monitored his health
and Dr Bryant put together a trustworthy surgical team. Dan
Lamott made sure all the president's arrangements that Washington were
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taken care of, and Grover Cleveland, we should mention, was
not a person who was in otherwise great health when
this whole plan was forming. He had a taste for
really rich food, which had caused him to develop gout,
and he drank quite a bit and he smoked. That
initial rough spot that he felt was in the place
where the end of his cigar usually sat in his mouth.
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He also likely had high blood pressure, So anesthesia alone
was a risk, let alone going through a surgery. And
at this point, remember like we're in the ether phase.
We'll talk about that in a little bit. And there
was this very real possibility that a more serious situation
might reveal itself once that surgery was under way, if
the growth was more expansive than had been apparent upon examination.
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So this whole thing was a significant risk, and the
worst case scenario was that the president would die. Bryant
immediately reached out to a colleague named Dr William Williams Keene,
telling him that he wished to speak to him about
a very important but private matter and a scene that
would be right at home and a spy thriller. Keen
and Bryant met a few days later on the deck
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of an empty ferry. Bryant was totally straightforward and told
Keen about the President's need for surgery, that the surgery
had to happen in secret on a yacht and that
he wanted Keen to be on the surgical team. Keene
was exactly the man you would want for this job,
a very well respected surgeon with an impeccable reputation who
had been leading the medical field and the very new
(19:17):
concept of brain surgery. Keene didn't vote for Grover Cleveland,
but he had a great respect for the office, and
after a moment of thought on the matter, he agreed
to participate. There was, as we said, just a huge
risk for the president, but for a surgeon like Keen
at the top of his profession, there was also a
great deal of risk. If something went wrong, his reputation,
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which had been built over years of work and study,
would probably just crumble around him. Briant recruited additional surgeons
to be part of the secret presidential surgery team. Dr
Edward Janeway, who was a professor of surgery at Bellevue
Hospital Medical College, dentist Dr Ferdinand Hasbrooke, who had an
advanced knowledge of anesthesia as it existed at the time,
(20:00):
and then Bryant's assistant Dr. John Erdman. The plan was
that Bryant would be the lead surgeon, with Keen and
Erdman assisting. Dr Hasbrooke would handle any tooth extractions that
would need to be performed and would also manage anesthesia
along with Dr O'Reilly and Dr Jane Way would be
in charge of monitoring the patient throughout. Bryant also made
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all preparations for the yacht to be ready for this mission.
The yacht had a saloon, and it was decided that
it would be transformed into an operating room. The furniture
was removed and the space was disinfected. A chair was
brought in for the President to sit in throughout the procedure.
Special equipment and deliveries were explained away by Dr Bryant
(20:42):
to the ship's crew. They were told the President was
going to have a tooth extraction on board, and because
the crew were accustomed to the President both being there
and needing various special arrangements, they seem to accept this explanation.
So coming up, we're going to talk about the surgery itself,
and we'll get into that after we first take a
quick break and hear from the sponsors. That keep stuff
you missed in history class going. In the days leading
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up to the surgery, President Cleveland began to wonder more
and more about the after effects of this whole plan.
It had already been explained to him that he was
going to lose part of his jaw in the process,
and he had Dan Lamont reach out to Dr Bryant
to ask if his speaking voice was going to be
impacted by the surgery. The President also wanted to know
how soon he could resume his duties and begin meeting
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with politicians, because this whole silver issue was still in
the mix, and what he was really asking was how
soon he could do his job without anybody realizing that
the President had had surgery. So Bryant explained that initially
the President's speech would be different, but that he was
working with a prospidantist he would make an artificial jaw
that could fix the problem, and as for meetings, it
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was going to take a month for the President to recover.
He tried to be clear that this was an estimate,
presuming everything went well. He did withhold some information, though,
so that he didn't add stress to the situation. Specifically,
he did not bring up the possibility that they might
need to remove a section of skull above the jaw
if it turned out the cancer had spread farther than
(22:19):
they realized. Yeah. His logic in that was like, if
we have to do that, there's no covering this up anyway,
So I may as well not even tell him because
I can't give him any kind of assurance that we
can keep a secret at that point. In the meantime,
President Cleveland worked really furiously to handle as much of
his work ahead of the trip on the Unita as
he could. This is something he was known for having,
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was a very cluttered desk, and he was really trying
to get it completely cleared off. And then late in
the afternoon on June thirty, he and Lamont traveled by
train in a private car to Jersey City and from
there they took a ferry to Manhattan, and then they
made the final leg to peer A in a carriage,
and then they are They boarded a small boat which
took them to the Oneida, which was waiting in the
(23:03):
East River. When a reporter approached him during the ferry ride,
the President said that he was just going to his
summer house for a rest. The doctors were already on board.
They had all arrived that afternoon, all leaving Manhattan from
different peers, so that they did not draw attention. All
the men spent a cordial evening together before retiring to bed.
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The next morning started with a physical exam of the President,
which Dr Jane Way conducted. He was happy with the
President's finals, so Jane Way gave him a mouth disinfectant
to prep him for the surgery. There had been a
brief hope that the doctors would be able to use
nitrous oxide for the surgery rather than resorting to ether
due to the more dangerous nature of ether and possible
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poor reactions to it, but they realized that the tumor
was bad enough that that was simply not going to work,
so the decision was made that they would start with
nitrous and then they would transition to ether if they
needed to. After the pre surgery checks and a little
bit of breakfast, the Oneida started its journey, and once
the yacht passed into the Long Island Sound, they all
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made their way to the saloon turned surgical suite. Just
after noon, the doctors, along with the ship's steward, Charles Peterson,
who was assisting in a non medical capacity, started an
unprecedented operation on the President. The patient did not respond
well to the nitrous oxide. It took a double dose
to get him unconscious, which meant that ether was going
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to have to be used Eventually. The procedure began with
two teeth being removed. Those are the bicuspids on his
upper left jaw. Once those teeth had been pulled by
the dentist, the removal of the tumor began, although it
appeared for a brief moment that the President was actually
waking up, so that meant that they all had to
stop what they were doing while additional gas was administered
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and then resume once the patient was fully under again.
Once the cutting of the soft palate was complete, the
President was given ether before the damaged bone and surrounding
tissue were removed. The cancer had spread more than had
been expected, but it did not affect one of the
areas they had been most concerned about, which was the
eye socket. Ultimately, a section of the upper jaw, several
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more teeth and a section of hard palate were also removed.
It was over roughly ninety minutes after it started. President
Cleveland started waking up just before three pm. Obviously and
unsurprisingly in pain. He was given morphine and then taken
with great effort. Because he was a large man to
his cabin and the rest of the day, one of
(25:33):
the doctors was always with him, checking his vitals and
standing by should he awaken. His mouth was packed with gauze,
so even when he did try to speak a little bit,
it was pretty rough going trying to understand him. But
by evening he was deemed to be in stable condition,
which was a huge releaf to everyone. And then the
next day he was even better. He was actually able
to walk around the ship a bit. So you recall
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earlier they had told a reporter he was on the
way to his summer home, and when the Oneida had
not docked in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, which was where that
summer home was, by Independence day, press started to wonder
where he really was. But he had said he was
getting some rest, and they had not seen anything of him.
So while there were rumors among the reporters that something
(26:17):
might be up, they just really didn't have anything to report.
A few papers did run articles that speculated that something
might be wrong with the president. Mrs Cleveland phoned the
papers tell them that her husband was fishing, and then
all was well, yeah, she kind of very politely was like,
please stop printing things suggesting there's something wrong with my husband. Um. Meanwhile,
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Dr Hasbrooke, the dentist, had left the yacht on July second,
for another appointment. Late on July four, like late in
the evening, the rest of the surgical team was let
off at sag Harbor, although Bryant just went ashore at
Sag Harbor briefly and then returned to the yacht after
a quick supply run, and then he and Cleveland traveled
on to Buzzard's Bay, where the lady, who at this
(27:00):
point was seven months pregnant, was waiting at Gray Gables,
which is the name of their summer home. The President,
Dr Bryant, and Dan Lamont finally arrived there on late
July five. Lamont issued a statement to the press that
they had simply been pretty leisurely about their travel and
that they had stayed out on the water longer than
they had initially planned because the fishing was so good
(27:21):
that they didn't want to come in. And to address
the health rumors, he said that the President had been
dealing with about of rheumatism, but nothing more. But rumors
had already started spreading in New York that the President
had a growth in his mouth, The reporter managed to
get Dr Bryant when he was outside the house, but
the doctor just corroborated the whole rheumatism story and ended
(27:43):
the interview and questions about a tumor and surgery started.
The reporter published the entire conversation, but as time wore
on and Bryant and Lamont stuck to their stories, the
press eventually bought it, and by July eight started reporting
that the President was recovering from some minor tooth malady
and nothing more ominous than that. Yeah, they let the
(28:04):
two things slip in a little bit, since they had
already told the ship's crew that. I was like, Oh,
he just had to get some teeth pulled, it's no big.
On July tenth, the President was recovered enough to go
out fishing with Lamont and Bryant on his sailboat, which
was named the Ruth, presumably for his toddler daughter. They
had a child already while they were pregnant with their second,
and during his stay at Grey Gables, Prosidantis Cassine Gibson
(28:28):
had set up a little lab at the house, and
he was able to cast the president's mouth and make
a vulcanized plate that plugged the hole that had been
left by the surgery, and this plate also made Cleveland's
cheek and face looked normal, and all of this helped
sell the ruse that he had never been seriously ill.
Sometime in mid July, Bryant noticed during an examination of
(28:49):
Cleveland's mouth that there was another growth at the edge
of the surgical wound. The entire team was brought back,
except for Dr Hasbrook, who had leaked the story in
New York once again that used the operating room on
the Oneida on July sevent The procedure seems to have
been short and uncomplicated, and to the outside world it
(29:09):
had appeared that the President had just gone on a
day trip with his friend Benedict Yeah. That one was
so quick that it was like a normal overnight trip.
He was back the next morning. But as the president's
life was returning to something that looked like normal and
he was starting to take meetings again, a New York
reporter named E. J. Edwards was on the case. It
turned out that when Dr Hasbrooke had taken the job,
(29:31):
he had done so with the understanding that he was
going to be able to leave the Oneida right after
the surgery and make another appointment where he had promised
to handle anesthesia. But because he was dropped off on
July two instead of July one, which is what he
had initially asked for, he was so late to the
procedure that it was canceled, and to explain his absence,
(29:51):
he spilled the beans on the President's secret surgery, and
in turn, the man that he told shared that information
and it made its way to the reporter. At Words.
Edwards carefully checked out this story and it did not
run until August when it appeared in the Philadelphia Press
under the headline quote the President a very sick man.
(30:11):
An operation performed on him on Mr Bennedict's yacht. Part
of the jaw removed. Yeah, he had a lot of
the details right. There were a few things that weren't
quite accurate, and the dentist had only named himself and
Dr Bryant, so the other doctor's names were at least
left out of it. But in going to press with
(30:33):
this story, Edwards was gambling and ultimately he lost. Although
his story was picked up by the wire and newspapers everywhere,
the President, of course, flatly denied it, and because there
was a lot of competition amongst papers. There were other
outlets perfectly willing to defend the story that the President
was fine and flat out accused E. J. Edwards of
(30:54):
lying and just making this entire thing up. Alexander McClure,
editor of rival paper, The Philadelphia Times, was friends with
Grover Cleveland, and he helped to discredit Edwards to help
with his version of the story, which was that he
was in perfect health. The president, who had been kind
of reclusive despite the raging war going on over silver
(31:15):
in Washington, d C. Had started making some really obvious
public outings. He would even take Francis, who was due
to deliver a baby at any day, on a train
trip from Buzzard's Bay to Washington. So as the Sherman
Silver Purchase Act was facing repeal, which eventually happened, and
he was making a good recovery and welcoming his second
(31:35):
daughter into the world. Grover Cleveland found that the press
was more willing to give him the benefit of the
doubt than this reporter E J. Edwards, and the controversy
over the story deeply damaged the reporter's reputation, although he
did continue to work in reporting Grover Cleveland died on
June and the secret keepers regarding the events on the
(31:58):
Oneida In were also aging and dying. When Dr Bryant
died in nineteen fourteen, that left only three living men
who knew the entire truth. They were John Erdman, Elias Benedict,
and Dr William Keane. Finally, in nineteen seventeen, with permission
from Grover Cleveland's widow, who by then had remarried, Keane
(32:19):
published the true account of what happened in the September
twenty two Saturday Evening Post. It was a sensation because
it cleared up so many mysteries that journalists had just
accepted and moved on from back in eighteen nine, and
also because it vindicated Edwards. Yeah, it was like, oh,
that does make more sense. We totally accepted that rheumatism thing.
(32:40):
But he really was gone for like four days when
nobody knew where he was um. That tomor incidentally, that
was removed from President Cleveland's jaw is now in the
collection of the Motor Museum, which is just a lovely
piece of this story that makes me smile because I
don't know, I'm sick. Um, I like a little medical
(33:02):
oddity in a jar. Y Uh, Yeah, it's really fascinating.
There are lots of other, um medical theories about the
nature of this cancer and you know, it's causes and
whatnot that I didn't get into, but those are pretty fascinating.
And um, there is a really marvelous book which was
one of my sources for this, by a journalist named
(33:25):
Matthew al I think it's l g O, called The
President Is a Sick Man, came out in and it
tells this whole story and also the backstories of every
person involved and and how it all played out in
a whole lot of details. So if you're interested in
the deeper version of this story, I highly recommend it
because his writing style is really really lovely. It's a
quick read but very thorough. I super enjoyed it. But yeah,
(33:46):
one thing we should point out, which also does come
up in in Algo's book, is that this is certainly
not the only time, neither the first nor the last,
that a president hit a sickness, but it is so
spectacularly weird, um that I just found it completely captivating. Um.
(34:06):
Do you have some listener mail for us? I do, Uh,
this is from our listeners Selena, and she is writing
about um our Brief History of the Pieta, which we
rereleased recently as part of our host Fhaves playlist for
Pandemic Entertainment, and she wrote, I loved hearing the re
airing of this podcast as always your informative as well
as aware of religious background with your subjects, and I
(34:28):
appreciate it. I wanted to add that the Vatican does
have a replica of the Pieta that visited Toronto in
two thousand two for World Youth Day. I got to
see it along with many other Vatican art pieces at
the Royal Ontario Museum and it was blocked from the
public with only a rope. I had to remind myself
not to touch while seeing now Saint Pope John Paul
the Second was the highlight of my week. The unexpected,
(34:51):
breathtaking pleasure of seeing this masterpiece close enough to touch
was a close second. You can actually see the chisel
marks and Michelangelo's not so subtle signature. It was amazing. Um. Yeah,
I don't know very much about that replica cast, but
I think that's a cool way to share this piece
of art in a way that's not quite as dangerous
as trying to move it again with the original, So
(35:12):
thank you for that information, Selena. I kind of want
to look up where that thing is now and if
it continues to tour, but I have not done so yet.
If you would like to write to us, you can
do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
You can also find us everywhere on social media as
Missed in History, and we would love it if you
would subscribe to the show. You can do that on
(35:33):
the I heart Radio app, at Apple podcast or wherever
it is you listen. Stuff you Missed in History Class
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. So when
I was researching our recent two parter on emergency medicine,
I stumbled across the line about the secret surgery that
(00:24):
Grover Cleveland had while he was in office, and I thought, well,
that goes on the list. As soon as you mentioned
it to me, I was like, that sounds amazing, and
I started just kind of side reading about it, even
while I was still working on that episode, because I
was so intrigued, and the more I learned about it,
the more fascinated I became. So that is what we
were talking about today. A quick heads up for the
(00:47):
very squeamish. We're going to talk a little bit about
surgery here, and there will be some details just for
like to contextualize what an achievement this whole thing was.
But we will not get super duper graphic, like I
would only say, worry about it if you are very,
very squeamish. So today we're going to talk about events
that happened during Grover Cleveland's second term as president. He's
(01:09):
the only president in the US who have served two terms,
but not consecutively. He started his first term after being
sworn in on March fourth, five, and that first term
was really busy. He vetoed four hundred fourteen bills during it,
including aid packages to farmers who needed literal seed money
after the drought had destroyed their crops and left them
(01:30):
without seed for the next planting cycle. But Cleveland wrote
that bailing out the farmers would quote weaken the sturdiness
of our national character. He also got married in June
of eighteen eighty six. That was to twenty one year
old Francis Fulsom. He had known Francis, who was twenty
eight years younger than he was, since she was a child.
He had been good friends with her father. Francis was
(01:52):
the youngest first lady in US history, and she was
vastly different from her husband. She charmed virtually everyone because
she was very kind and witty. Uh Grover, on the
other hand, could be brusque and prone to outrage. The
president became so frustrated by the constant press coverage that
he and his bride got his newlyweds. He started writing
(02:16):
angry letters to various newspapers. Uh. Yeah, he was not
enthused with the President General for a variety of reasons.
But Francis, I mean from the moment she arrived in
the Executive Mansion because it was not being called the
White House yet at that point, like the entire staff
sort of fell in love with her and would do
anything for her. And part of that charm of hers
(02:37):
was why reporters were constantly following them, because everyone was
really fascinated by her and adored her. When Cleveland ran
for re election in he lost to Benjamin Harrison, and
Cleveland actually won the popular vote but lost in the
electoral college. And as the Cleveland's left the Executive Mansion,
Francis reportedly told the staff members to take care of
(03:00):
the furniture and remember where everything was because they were
going to be back in four years. And that is
a mighty bold exit line, but she was not wrong.
During the four years after he left office, Grover Cleveland
moved to New York City. He dabbled in law practice,
but slowly found himself being drawn back into politics. The
(03:20):
ninety mid term elections had seen a lot of Democratic
victories and that made him think it would be worth
running again, and he believed that the quote dangerous and
reckless experiment of shifting so much financial backing into silver
had opened up the door for a pro gold candidate
like himself. We'll be talking more about that in just
a bit. And this wasn't incidentally a position that everyone,
(03:43):
even within his party, was in agreement with. There was
a large chunk of the Democratic Party at the time
that favored the moves that had been made into favoring silver,
and there were plenty of predictions that, in being so
assertive of his stance on the matter, was probably gonna
cost Grover Cleveland the nomination, but it did not. The
campaign itself was actually quiet. Harrison's wife was ill with
(04:05):
tuberculosis and he did not want to be on the
campaign trail. Cleveland thought it would be odd to campaign
when everyone knew that the president couldn't because of a
family illness, and that ultimately ended with with Caroline Harrison's
death in October. So she died not long before the election.
Due largely to the issue of the national budget, Cleveland
(04:28):
one and Harrison seemed pretty relieved about that. And this
actually created a unique situation because Grover Cleveland then had
to discuss the presidential transition as he entered office, with
President Benjamin Harrison in an exact role reversal of what
had happened when Cleveland left office after his first term
four years prior, and it was Harrison who had to
(04:49):
come to him to work out the details regarding the
handover of power. So to contextualize the situation that Grover
Cleveland was facing during the second term, the nation was
in the middle of a financial crisis. There had been
several banking panics in the decades leading up to the
eighteen nineties, but the panic of eighteen ninety three was
(05:10):
much larger in scope that caused deeper fears of instability
in the US than the previous two had done. Those
earlier panics had taken place in eighteen eighty four and
eighteen ninety Starting several years before eighteen ninety three, there
had been a severe dip in the gold reserves held
by the U. S. Treasury. In eighteen ninety the U. S.
Treasury had a hundred and ninety million dollars in gold.
(05:33):
In eighteen ninety three, that number had dwindled to one million,
and the cause of that dip is related to some
of the story that we told in our previous episode
about silver magnate James G. Fair. As Fair and his
fellow silver kings were amassing huge fortunes in silver, and
as gold was getting harder to find, there was this
shift in thinking that silver might be a more worthwhile
(05:56):
monetary standard than gold. Also, in eighteen nine, to the
Sherman Silver Purchase Act was passed. This law called for
the US Treasury to start making more significant investments in
silver acquisition. That led to fears that the United States
would abandon the gold standard, the system by which treasury
notes were directly linked to gold value and could be
(06:19):
exchanged for that amount of gold. As a consequence, the
demand for gold skyrocketed as people traded in their treasury
notes before the value could become unstable. This was almost
like a rush on the bank, except with the Federal Treasury. Yes,
but there were also runs on the bank because this
situation kind of folded in on itself. As the treasuries
(06:41):
gold dwindled, there were concerns that there was going to
be a freeze put on the ability to exchange notes
for their value in gold, and that possibility only drove
people to do it more and then there were runs
on banks throughout the country because nervous account holders, thinking
the economy was going to collapse, wanted to withdraw all
their fun Additionally, in the eighteen eighties, a number of
(07:03):
things happened that would impact US finances in the eighteen nineties.
For one, a drought started in the late eighteen eighties
that severely impacted the farming industry, especially in the Midwest.
Many farmers were unable to pay their debts because of
the losses that were incurred and the value of their
land dropped. And at the same time, the eighteen eighties
had been this period of really rapid economic expansion in
(07:26):
the US. Railroads and mining operations were big drivers to
this economic expansion. But as a consequence, both of these
industries grew really rapidly to the point that they were
beyond realistic financial sustainability. Was they were speculating on future
growth with way over inflated projections. On February twenty eight,
(07:47):
nine three, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad declared bankruptcy, and
this signal to the entire nation if anybody was in
doubt up to that point that the situation was really dire.
Grover Cleveland was sworn in to office for his second
term just ten days later on March fourth. While the
usual events associated with the inauguration day did take place,
(08:08):
that was the swearing in ceremony, the parade, which included
women for the first time, and the inaugural ball. Attendance
at all of this was really low. It was an
awful day weather wise. It was windy, with some sleep,
but more than anything, the country was just not in
the mood to party. Yeah, there are stories of like
all of these Grover Cleveland souvenirs stands being like all
(08:30):
over Washington, d C. Which we've ever been to an
inauguration day, that's very common, and like nobody was buying.
They were just standing there, going, I guess we're gonna
have a lot of Grover Cleveland merchandise. Forever Cleveland's administration
set to work on the problems that it had inherited immediately,
and this was of course a huge undertaking. As the
finances of the nation teetered in uncertainty, the newly sworn
(08:53):
in president was dealing with not just railroad closures, but
also banks failing. As we said, unemployment, really rocky, stock market,
and foreign investors that were also becoming nervous and taking
their money out of US interests. On April, the President
authorized the following statement, which circulated widely in papers around
the country. The statement is pretty long, So, Tracy, do
(09:15):
you want to alternate on it? Oh, we can do that.
I'll do this first bit quote. The inclination on the
part of the public to accept newspaper reports concerning the
intentions of those charged with the management of our national
finances seems to justify my emphatic contradiction of the statement
that the redemption of any kind of treasury notes except
(09:36):
in gold, has at any time been determined upon or
contemplated by the Secretary of the Treasury or any other
member of the present administration. The President and his Cabinet
are absolutely harmonious, and the determination to exercise every power
conferred upon them to maintain the public credit, to keep
(09:57):
the public faith, and to preserve the parity. But sween
gold and silver, and between all financial obligations of the government,
it goes on. While the law of e. T. Ninety
forcing the purchase of a fixed amount of silver every month,
provides that the Secretary of the Treasury, in his discretion,
may redeem in either gold or silver the treasury notes
(10:17):
given in payment of silver purchases. Yet the declaration of
the policy of the government to maintain the parity between
the two medals seems so clearly to regulate this discretion
as to dictate their redemption in gold, and it concludes quote,
of course, perplexities and difficulties have grown out of an
unfortunate financial policy which we found in vogue, and embarrassments
(10:40):
have arisen from ill advised financial legislation confronting us at
every turn. But with cheerful confidence among the people and
a patriotic disposition to cooperate, the threatened dangers will be averted,
pending a legislative return to a better and sounder financial plan.
The strong credit of the country is unimpaired, and the
(11:01):
good sense of our people, which has never failed in
time of need, is at hand to save us from disaster.
So with this whole statement, Cleveland was really pushing to
usher in the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act.
That was a move that he was making in the
hopes of regaining some stability during the crisis. So as
(11:21):
this was happening, there was a whole other situation playing
out in Grover Cleveland's wife outside of the political realm,
and we will talk about that right after a quick
sponsor break. So, as we said before the break, as
all of this was playing out with the panic, and
(11:41):
as Cleveland was working to steer the nation through that
financial panic, he had a more personal crisis brewing. He
was soon to be a father, although that was not
publicly known at the time uh and was not considered
a crisis, but his wife, Francis, was two months pregnant
when President Cleveland took his second oath of office. But
the thing that would become more pressing was something that
(12:02):
the president discovered eleven days after that April statement about
repealing the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. On May five, he
noticed a rough spot on the roof of his mouth,
but really deep in the midst of running a country
that was in a precarious state. He did not do
anything about this initially, but over the next six weeks
(12:23):
that rough spot turned into a lump that got bigger. Reportedly,
the president was often up at night because of it,
although whether that was from pain or from simply worrying
about the situation is a little bit of an issue
of speculation. He actually had his wife, Francis, look at it,
and she was, as she put it, alarmed when I
saw it, and so she made the decision that they
(12:44):
had to get a doctor to look at it immediately.
The doctor was their regular physician, Doctor Joseph Decatur Bryant.
Dr Bryant was their family physician, but he also specialized
in oral tumors, so it makes sense that Francis would
reach outside the government's presidential reas horses and get him involved.
Francis wrote to Dr Bryant on June to tell him
(13:05):
that there was some sort of problem on the roof
of her husband's mouth and that she would like to
speak with the doctor the next day. Francis had errands
on the nineteenth that took her to Jersey City, and
she asked for a meeting there and their brief visit,
she told Dr Bryant the details of this gross appearance
and also that she was quite worried about it. The
meeting ended with Bryant planning a trip to Washington, d C.
(13:28):
To examine the president. Yeah, there are actually some theories
that probably um when Grover Cleveland took office that he
would have asked Bryant because he was a trusted family
friend and had been their family doctor to become the
presidential doctor, but Bryant didn't want to leave his practice
in New York. But there was even while Francis was
(13:50):
meeting with Dr Bryant, another doctor on the case, The
president's dentist had seen the legion and so he contacted
the president's doctor about it. That physician was Dr Robert M. O'Reilly,
and so he had examined the president's mouth and he
found that growth quite worrying as well. He wanted to
have tissue from the growth tested, but without anyone knowing
(14:11):
that the sample had come from the president's person, so
he took a scraping and he sent it as an
anonymous sample to an army lab. While the President's name
was not on the sample, it did have a note
that it was an incredibly important specimen, and that led
pathologist Dr William Welch to suspect that it was a
sample of Grover Cleveland's tissue. That probably made it a
(14:33):
lot more unpleasant for him to come to the conclusion
at the end of this examination that the sample was
from a malignant tumor. And as that lab examination was
happening of the tissue. Dr Bryant had arrived in Washington
and had seen President Cleveland himself. He described the tumor
to his patient as quote, a bad looking tenant, and
(14:53):
he told him that he should have it removed and
very soon. So, of course this was terrible news, and
not just because the president had a frightening cancerous growth
that could jeopardize his health or maybe his life. Also
because cancer was really a pr nightmare at this point.
People wouldn't even say the word cancer if they could
avoid it in any way. They would use other euphemisms
(15:16):
just to keep the name out of their mouths. This was,
of course, almost a hundred and thirty years ago. The
medical establishments understanding of cancer was a lot less robust
than it is today, and they were not nearly as
many treatment options. Saying someone had cancer at the time
was almost like saying they were already dead. Society was
just downright phobic about it, and there was serious stigma
(15:39):
around it. So for a president, and one only just
a few months into his term, to have cancer was
the kind of news that could cause a panic in
the midst of an already existing financial panic, political adversaries
and even those with whom the President had tentative ally
ship could use that kind of information against him, and
(16:00):
his effort to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act could
be completely ruined if people thought that he was in
a weak in physical state. Dr Bryant thought the best
course of treatment for President Cleveland was surgery. He and
Dr O'Reilly discussed the matter and then met with the
President and the President's Secretary of War and close friend
that was Dan Lamont. This quartet of men agreed right
(16:21):
off the bat that the whole matter had to be
kept entirely under wraps. They were planning to do this surgery, though,
so keeping its secret was a really complicated proposal. They
had to perform the procedure somewhere very very private. That
automatically meant not a hospital, and it had to be
done entirely with incisions inside the President's mouth so that
(16:43):
no external scars would give the truth away. This also meant,
and Grover Cleveland was apparently adamant about this, that they
could not shave his mustache. Uh. And while Cleveland's summer
home in Massachusetts was introduced as a possible location for
the surgery. It was pretty quickly dismissed because the press
was often lurking nearby, especially if they knew the President
(17:05):
was there. Eventually, the President introduced a very novel possibility.
He could have the surgery on board the Oneida, a
yacht owned by his friend Elias Benedict and that the
two had often taken out for fishing trips. The use
of a boat was of course super risky, but because
Cleveland had been on that boat many times, it would
arouse zero suspicions for him to take a trip aboard it.
(17:28):
And while the doctors pressed for an immediate surgery, the
President needed time to put some things in order before
he could do it. This meeting took place on June,
and the President agreed that he would be ready on
July one. In the meantime, Dr O'Reilly monitored his health
and Dr Bryant put together a trustworthy surgical team. Dan
Lamott made sure all the president's arrangements that Washington were
(17:50):
taken care of, and Grover Cleveland, we should mention, was
not a person who was in otherwise great health when
this whole plan was forming. He had a taste for
really rich food, which had caused him to develop gout,
and he drank quite a bit and he smoked. That
initial rough spot that he felt was in the place
where the end of his cigar usually sat in his mouth.
(18:11):
He also likely had high blood pressure, So anesthesia alone
was a risk, let alone going through a surgery. And
at this point, remember like we're in the ether phase.
We'll talk about that in a little bit. And there
was this very real possibility that a more serious situation
might reveal itself once that surgery was under way, if
the growth was more expansive than had been apparent upon examination.
(18:33):
So this whole thing was a significant risk, and the
worst case scenario was that the president would die. Bryant
immediately reached out to a colleague named Dr William Williams Keene,
telling him that he wished to speak to him about
a very important but private matter and a scene that
would be right at home and a spy thriller. Keen
and Bryant met a few days later on the deck
(18:55):
of an empty ferry. Bryant was totally straightforward and told
Keen about the President's need for surgery, that the surgery
had to happen in secret on a yacht and that
he wanted Keen to be on the surgical team. Keene
was exactly the man you would want for this job,
a very well respected surgeon with an impeccable reputation who
had been leading the medical field and the very new
(19:17):
concept of brain surgery. Keene didn't vote for Grover Cleveland,
but he had a great respect for the office, and
after a moment of thought on the matter, he agreed
to participate. There was, as we said, just a huge
risk for the president, but for a surgeon like Keen
at the top of his profession, there was also a
great deal of risk. If something went wrong, his reputation,
(19:39):
which had been built over years of work and study,
would probably just crumble around him. Briant recruited additional surgeons
to be part of the secret presidential surgery team. Dr
Edward Janeway, who was a professor of surgery at Bellevue
Hospital Medical College, dentist Dr Ferdinand Hasbrooke, who had an
advanced knowledge of anesthesia as it existed at the time,
(20:00):
and then Bryant's assistant Dr. John Erdman. The plan was
that Bryant would be the lead surgeon, with Keen and
Erdman assisting. Dr Hasbrooke would handle any tooth extractions that
would need to be performed and would also manage anesthesia
along with Dr O'Reilly and Dr Jane Way would be
in charge of monitoring the patient throughout. Bryant also made
(20:21):
all preparations for the yacht to be ready for this mission.
The yacht had a saloon, and it was decided that
it would be transformed into an operating room. The furniture
was removed and the space was disinfected. A chair was
brought in for the President to sit in throughout the procedure.
Special equipment and deliveries were explained away by Dr Bryant
(20:42):
to the ship's crew. They were told the President was
going to have a tooth extraction on board, and because
the crew were accustomed to the President both being there
and needing various special arrangements, they seem to accept this explanation.
So coming up, we're going to talk about the surgery itself,
and we'll get into that after we first take a
quick break and hear from the sponsors. That keep stuff
you missed in history class going. In the days leading
(21:12):
up to the surgery, President Cleveland began to wonder more
and more about the after effects of this whole plan.
It had already been explained to him that he was
going to lose part of his jaw in the process,
and he had Dan Lamont reach out to Dr Bryant
to ask if his speaking voice was going to be
impacted by the surgery. The President also wanted to know
how soon he could resume his duties and begin meeting
(21:35):
with politicians, because this whole silver issue was still in
the mix, and what he was really asking was how
soon he could do his job without anybody realizing that
the President had had surgery. So Bryant explained that initially
the President's speech would be different, but that he was
working with a prospidantist he would make an artificial jaw
that could fix the problem, and as for meetings, it
(21:58):
was going to take a month for the President to recover.
He tried to be clear that this was an estimate,
presuming everything went well. He did withhold some information, though,
so that he didn't add stress to the situation. Specifically,
he did not bring up the possibility that they might
need to remove a section of skull above the jaw
if it turned out the cancer had spread farther than
(22:19):
they realized. Yeah. His logic in that was like, if
we have to do that, there's no covering this up anyway,
So I may as well not even tell him because
I can't give him any kind of assurance that we
can keep a secret at that point. In the meantime,
President Cleveland worked really furiously to handle as much of
his work ahead of the trip on the Unita as
he could. This is something he was known for having,
(22:41):
was a very cluttered desk, and he was really trying
to get it completely cleared off. And then late in
the afternoon on June thirty, he and Lamont traveled by
train in a private car to Jersey City and from
there they took a ferry to Manhattan, and then they
made the final leg to peer A in a carriage,
and then they are They boarded a small boat which
took them to the Oneida, which was waiting in the
(23:03):
East River. When a reporter approached him during the ferry ride,
the President said that he was just going to his
summer house for a rest. The doctors were already on board.
They had all arrived that afternoon, all leaving Manhattan from
different peers, so that they did not draw attention. All
the men spent a cordial evening together before retiring to bed.
(23:25):
The next morning started with a physical exam of the President,
which Dr Jane Way conducted. He was happy with the
President's finals, so Jane Way gave him a mouth disinfectant
to prep him for the surgery. There had been a
brief hope that the doctors would be able to use
nitrous oxide for the surgery rather than resorting to ether
due to the more dangerous nature of ether and possible
(23:47):
poor reactions to it, but they realized that the tumor
was bad enough that that was simply not going to work,
so the decision was made that they would start with
nitrous and then they would transition to ether if they
needed to. After the pre surgery checks and a little
bit of breakfast, the Oneida started its journey, and once
the yacht passed into the Long Island Sound, they all
(24:07):
made their way to the saloon turned surgical suite. Just
after noon, the doctors, along with the ship's steward, Charles Peterson,
who was assisting in a non medical capacity, started an
unprecedented operation on the President. The patient did not respond
well to the nitrous oxide. It took a double dose
to get him unconscious, which meant that ether was going
(24:29):
to have to be used Eventually. The procedure began with
two teeth being removed. Those are the bicuspids on his
upper left jaw. Once those teeth had been pulled by
the dentist, the removal of the tumor began, although it
appeared for a brief moment that the President was actually
waking up, so that meant that they all had to
stop what they were doing while additional gas was administered
(24:49):
and then resume once the patient was fully under again.
Once the cutting of the soft palate was complete, the
President was given ether before the damaged bone and surrounding
tissue were removed. The cancer had spread more than had
been expected, but it did not affect one of the
areas they had been most concerned about, which was the
eye socket. Ultimately, a section of the upper jaw, several
(25:13):
more teeth and a section of hard palate were also removed.
It was over roughly ninety minutes after it started. President
Cleveland started waking up just before three pm. Obviously and
unsurprisingly in pain. He was given morphine and then taken
with great effort. Because he was a large man to
his cabin and the rest of the day, one of
(25:33):
the doctors was always with him, checking his vitals and
standing by should he awaken. His mouth was packed with gauze,
so even when he did try to speak a little bit,
it was pretty rough going trying to understand him. But
by evening he was deemed to be in stable condition,
which was a huge releaf to everyone. And then the
next day he was even better. He was actually able
to walk around the ship a bit. So you recall
(25:57):
earlier they had told a reporter he was on the
way to his summer home, and when the Oneida had
not docked in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, which was where that
summer home was, by Independence day, press started to wonder
where he really was. But he had said he was
getting some rest, and they had not seen anything of him.
So while there were rumors among the reporters that something
(26:17):
might be up, they just really didn't have anything to report.
A few papers did run articles that speculated that something
might be wrong with the president. Mrs Cleveland phoned the
papers tell them that her husband was fishing, and then
all was well, yeah, she kind of very politely was like,
please stop printing things suggesting there's something wrong with my husband. Um. Meanwhile,
(26:39):
Dr Hasbrooke, the dentist, had left the yacht on July second,
for another appointment. Late on July four, like late in
the evening, the rest of the surgical team was let
off at sag Harbor, although Bryant just went ashore at
Sag Harbor briefly and then returned to the yacht after
a quick supply run, and then he and Cleveland traveled
on to Buzzard's Bay, where the lady, who at this
(27:00):
point was seven months pregnant, was waiting at Gray Gables,
which is the name of their summer home. The President,
Dr Bryant, and Dan Lamont finally arrived there on late
July five. Lamont issued a statement to the press that
they had simply been pretty leisurely about their travel and
that they had stayed out on the water longer than
they had initially planned because the fishing was so good
(27:21):
that they didn't want to come in. And to address
the health rumors, he said that the President had been
dealing with about of rheumatism, but nothing more. But rumors
had already started spreading in New York that the President
had a growth in his mouth, The reporter managed to
get Dr Bryant when he was outside the house, but
the doctor just corroborated the whole rheumatism story and ended
(27:43):
the interview and questions about a tumor and surgery started.
The reporter published the entire conversation, but as time wore
on and Bryant and Lamont stuck to their stories, the
press eventually bought it, and by July eight started reporting
that the President was recovering from some minor tooth malady
and nothing more ominous than that. Yeah, they let the
(28:04):
two things slip in a little bit, since they had
already told the ship's crew that. I was like, Oh,
he just had to get some teeth pulled, it's no big.
On July tenth, the President was recovered enough to go
out fishing with Lamont and Bryant on his sailboat, which
was named the Ruth, presumably for his toddler daughter. They
had a child already while they were pregnant with their second,
and during his stay at Grey Gables, Prosidantis Cassine Gibson
(28:28):
had set up a little lab at the house, and
he was able to cast the president's mouth and make
a vulcanized plate that plugged the hole that had been
left by the surgery, and this plate also made Cleveland's
cheek and face looked normal, and all of this helped
sell the ruse that he had never been seriously ill.
Sometime in mid July, Bryant noticed during an examination of
(28:49):
Cleveland's mouth that there was another growth at the edge
of the surgical wound. The entire team was brought back,
except for Dr Hasbrook, who had leaked the story in
New York once again that used the operating room on
the Oneida on July sevent The procedure seems to have
been short and uncomplicated, and to the outside world it
(29:09):
had appeared that the President had just gone on a
day trip with his friend Benedict Yeah. That one was
so quick that it was like a normal overnight trip.
He was back the next morning. But as the president's
life was returning to something that looked like normal and
he was starting to take meetings again, a New York
reporter named E. J. Edwards was on the case. It
turned out that when Dr Hasbrooke had taken the job,
(29:31):
he had done so with the understanding that he was
going to be able to leave the Oneida right after
the surgery and make another appointment where he had promised
to handle anesthesia. But because he was dropped off on
July two instead of July one, which is what he
had initially asked for, he was so late to the
procedure that it was canceled, and to explain his absence,
(29:51):
he spilled the beans on the President's secret surgery, and
in turn, the man that he told shared that information
and it made its way to the reporter. At Words.
Edwards carefully checked out this story and it did not
run until August when it appeared in the Philadelphia Press
under the headline quote the President a very sick man.
(30:11):
An operation performed on him on Mr Bennedict's yacht. Part
of the jaw removed. Yeah, he had a lot of
the details right. There were a few things that weren't
quite accurate, and the dentist had only named himself and
Dr Bryant, so the other doctor's names were at least
left out of it. But in going to press with
(30:33):
this story, Edwards was gambling and ultimately he lost. Although
his story was picked up by the wire and newspapers everywhere,
the President, of course, flatly denied it, and because there
was a lot of competition amongst papers. There were other
outlets perfectly willing to defend the story that the President
was fine and flat out accused E. J. Edwards of
(30:54):
lying and just making this entire thing up. Alexander McClure,
editor of rival paper, The Philadelphia Times, was friends with
Grover Cleveland, and he helped to discredit Edwards to help
with his version of the story, which was that he
was in perfect health. The president, who had been kind
of reclusive despite the raging war going on over silver
(31:15):
in Washington, d C. Had started making some really obvious
public outings. He would even take Francis, who was due
to deliver a baby at any day, on a train
trip from Buzzard's Bay to Washington. So as the Sherman
Silver Purchase Act was facing repeal, which eventually happened, and
he was making a good recovery and welcoming his second
(31:35):
daughter into the world. Grover Cleveland found that the press
was more willing to give him the benefit of the
doubt than this reporter E J. Edwards, and the controversy
over the story deeply damaged the reporter's reputation, although he
did continue to work in reporting Grover Cleveland died on
June and the secret keepers regarding the events on the
(31:58):
Oneida In were also aging and dying. When Dr Bryant
died in nineteen fourteen, that left only three living men
who knew the entire truth. They were John Erdman, Elias Benedict,
and Dr William Keane. Finally, in nineteen seventeen, with permission
from Grover Cleveland's widow, who by then had remarried, Keane
(32:19):
published the true account of what happened in the September
twenty two Saturday Evening Post. It was a sensation because
it cleared up so many mysteries that journalists had just
accepted and moved on from back in eighteen nine, and
also because it vindicated Edwards. Yeah, it was like, oh,
that does make more sense. We totally accepted that rheumatism thing.
(32:40):
But he really was gone for like four days when
nobody knew where he was um. That tomor incidentally, that
was removed from President Cleveland's jaw is now in the
collection of the Motor Museum, which is just a lovely
piece of this story that makes me smile because I
don't know, I'm sick. Um, I like a little medical
(33:02):
oddity in a jar. Y Uh, Yeah, it's really fascinating.
There are lots of other, um medical theories about the
nature of this cancer and you know, it's causes and
whatnot that I didn't get into, but those are pretty fascinating.
And um, there is a really marvelous book which was
one of my sources for this, by a journalist named
(33:25):
Matthew al I think it's l g O, called The
President Is a Sick Man, came out in and it
tells this whole story and also the backstories of every
person involved and and how it all played out in
a whole lot of details. So if you're interested in
the deeper version of this story, I highly recommend it
because his writing style is really really lovely. It's a
quick read but very thorough. I super enjoyed it. But yeah,
(33:46):
one thing we should point out, which also does come
up in in Algo's book, is that this is certainly
not the only time, neither the first nor the last,
that a president hit a sickness, but it is so
spectacularly weird, um that I just found it completely captivating. Um.
(34:06):
Do you have some listener mail for us? I do, Uh,
this is from our listeners Selena, and she is writing
about um our Brief History of the Pieta, which we
rereleased recently as part of our host Fhaves playlist for
Pandemic Entertainment, and she wrote, I loved hearing the re
airing of this podcast as always your informative as well
as aware of religious background with your subjects, and I
(34:28):
appreciate it. I wanted to add that the Vatican does
have a replica of the Pieta that visited Toronto in
two thousand two for World Youth Day. I got to
see it along with many other Vatican art pieces at
the Royal Ontario Museum and it was blocked from the
public with only a rope. I had to remind myself
not to touch while seeing now Saint Pope John Paul
the Second was the highlight of my week. The unexpected,
(34:51):
breathtaking pleasure of seeing this masterpiece close enough to touch
was a close second. You can actually see the chisel
marks and Michelangelo's not so subtle signature. It was amazing. Um. Yeah,
I don't know very much about that replica cast, but
I think that's a cool way to share this piece
of art in a way that's not quite as dangerous
as trying to move it again with the original, So
(35:12):
thank you for that information, Selena. I kind of want
to look up where that thing is now and if
it continues to tour, but I have not done so yet.
If you would like to write to us, you can
do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
You can also find us everywhere on social media as
Missed in History, and we would love it if you
would subscribe to the show. You can do that on
(35:33):
the I heart Radio app, at Apple podcast or wherever
it is you listen. Stuff you Missed in History Class
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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