[ad_1]
From George Washington to George W Bush, here’s a rundown of the US presidency’s most memorable brush with illness and death.
US President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference in the James Brady Press Conference Room of the White House August 3, 2020 in Washington, DC. Image: AFP
WASHINGTON – Donald Trump’s shocking announcement that he has coronavirus and his subsequent hospitalization has sent the United States reeling. However, the 45th president is not the first to suffer a serious illness or even a global pandemic while in office.
From George Washington to George W Bush, here’s a rundown of the US presidency’s most memorable brushes with illness and death.
Invoking the 25
The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution allows presidents to temporarily cede power to the vice president while incapacitated, a process in which one organ, the colon, has played a major role.
Former President George W. Bush invoked Amendment 25 in 2002 and again in 2007 while sedated for routine colonoscopies, which put then-Vice President Dick Cheney in charge for hours.
Although the amendment was adopted in 1967, Ronald Reagan indicated in 1985 that he did not believe he had officially invoked it when he left then-Vice President George HW Bush briefly in command while doctors removed a cancerous polyp from the president’s colon.
Reagan said the period was too “short and temporary” for the amendment to apply.
Secret surgery on yacht
Hoping to avoid public attention, former President Grover Cleveland stowed away to be operated at sea on a friend’s yacht in 1893.
With the nation on the brink of an economic depression, Cleveland set out to keep palatal cancer a secret so as not to send the nation into a financial panic. They mostly succeeded.
The tumor, five teeth and a portion of the left jaw were reportedly removed somewhere off the New York coast, and a rubber prosthesis was later inserted for cosmetic reasons.
the spanish flu
Trump is not the first US president to be humiliated by a global pandemic, or downplaying the dangers only to become infected with the disease. Woodrow Wilson contracted the Spanish flu in April 1919 while in France for the Paris peace talks negotiating the end of World War I.
Despite the seriousness of his health, his administration worked hard to keep his illness out of the reach of the general public.
GW gets sick
In 1790, George Washington contracted a flu so severe that it endangered the fate of the young nation; if the president died, the country could also die.
The street outside the presidential mansion, then in New York’s temporary capital, was closed and covered with hay to muffle the noise as the first president, just a year into his administration, quietly convalesced.
“Hounded by hiccups, Washington made strange gurgling noises that were interpreted as a death rattle,” writes biographer Ron Chernow in his book “Washington, A Life.” The president survived.
Murders
Petersen House, the abode where Abraham Lincoln died in central Washington, is today part of the US National Park Service, a “dark tourism” destination where visitors can see where the 16th President spent his final hours afterward. from being shot in the head across the street. at Ford’s Theater. Lincoln died in the back room of the house the morning after the attack.
He is one of four US presidents to be assassinated in office, all by gunfire. James A. Garfield died of infection two months after being shot to death in 1881 by a disgruntled candidate for public office.
Anarchist Leon Czolgosz killed President William McKinley in 1901. And John F. Kennedy was shot while riding in a convertible convertible in Dallas in 1963.
Additionally, Reagan was seriously injured in 1981 in an assassination attempt outside a Washington hotel by a deranged gunman.
Do you have milk?
In 1850, President Zachary Taylor attended the dedication of the Washington Monument on July 4. After drinking frozen milk and eating a large quantity of cherries, he reportedly fell ill and died several days later. Contemporaries blamed milk. Historians say the matter is still up in the air.
Three other presidents also died of natural causes while in office: William Henry Harrison, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Heart attacks and strokes
From a non-fatal heart attack and stroke suffered by Dwight D. Eisenhower to Roosevelt’s fatal brain hemorrhage, several sitting presidents have suffered from very common but life-threatening ailments.
Following his attack of the Spanish flu, Wilson suffered a near fatal stroke in October 1919, after which his wife, Edith, secretly held de facto decisions for the remaining 17 months of his administration.
[ad_2]
