29, about two months after the operation, Edwards published this report in the Philadelphia Press under the headline "Was the President a Very Sick Man?" And it was really an amazingly detailed account of operation that had been performed on the yacht. And Edwards went and tracked the story down and confirmed it with the doctor.Īnd Aug. And he had a friend who was a doctor in New York who had heard these rumors. Edwards was a reporter for the Philadelphia press.
Wall Street was in a panic.Īnd Cleveland was afraid that, if it came to be known he had cancer, which at that time was considered a death sentence, that the bottom would fall out of the markets and there would be utter financial chaos in the country.Į.J.
And by the end of the year, 119 railroads had gone bankrupt. The Reading Railroad went bankrupt shortly before Grover Cleveland took office. MATTHEW ALGEO, "The President Is a Sick Man": The summer of 1893 was a terrible period in America's economic history.
But I guess context is important in this case, right? Why was a cancerous growth in the mouth at this point in American history such a big deal that they were willing to go to these lengths? Matthew, whenever the president has a health problem, I guess it's a big deal. We sat down at the historic Rosedale Conservancy farmhouse just across the street from where the president's cottage once stood. I caught up with journalist and historian Matthew Algeo in President Cleveland's favorite refuge from the White House, the Washington, D.C., neighborhood that now bears his name, Cleveland Park. It's all the subject of a new book titled "The President Is a Sick Man." The public was kept in the dark for weeks while he recuperated and for decades to follow. But that's exactly what happened in 1893, when Grover Cleveland underwent secret cancer surgery. With modern presidents appearing in public every day - and sometimes more than once - it's hard to imagine an American president dropping out of sight for nearly a week. Finally tonight, a true story that reads like a detective tale.
0 kommentar(er)
