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A deadly pandemic swept the world. Millions had been infected. And suddenly, the president of the United States himself was affected by the virus.
It was 1919. Woodrow Wilson had been struck down by the Spanish flu in Paris, where he and other world leaders were negotiating the settlement in post-WWI Europe.
In public, the White House played down the illness as a simple cold. In reality, Wilson was “seriously ill” with influenza, his doctor wrote privately.
“His [infection] it was pretty severe, ”said David Petriello, a historian. “That dramatically impacted him during the Versailles peace conference.”
One hundred years later, the echoes of Wilson’s experience have returned when Donald Trump became infected with coronavirus. His doctor said Friday that Trump was “fatigued but in a good mood.” He would spend a few days at the Walter Reed military medical center “as a precaution,” the White House said.
Trump is the latest in a long line of American presidents to suffer from health problems in office. The history of disease in American presidents is largely one of intense secrecy and, at times, outright lies.
Wilson would later suffer a stroke in 1919 that partially paralyzed him and left him unable to serve as president without the help of his second wife, Edith.
“His wife essentially ran the White House,” said Petriello, who recounted the disease’s impact on the presidency in A pestilence on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The imperative of secrecy has included denying the truth even when it is revealed, most notably in 1893 when Grover Cleveland underwent surgery to remove a cancerous lump in his mouth while in office.
The procedure was carried out on a friend’s yacht off the coast of New York, without the vice president’s knowledge. The later cover story was that he underwent dental surgery for a toothache.
One journalist, EJ Edwards, published a story about what really happened. “The White House flatly denied it,” said Matthew Algeo, author of a book on Cleveland surgery called The president is a sick man.
Algeo said that Cleveland at the time had a reputation for honesty, so Edwards was discredited and the president’s denial was widely believed. “He used all his honesty tokens with this big lie.”
Only years later, in 1917 years after Cleveland’s death, would one of his doctors admit that Edwards was right.
“It was a very successful example of covering up a president,” Algeo said. “The president’s doctor is not obligated to tell me, you, and the American public what is going on. He is obliged to respect the wishes of the patient ”.
The question of who is in control of the US government if the president suffers a coup was not firmly resolved until the late 1960s, when the 25th Amendment specified that the vice president becomes the acting chief executive officer.
On both occasions George W Bush underwent a colonoscopy while in office, he formally transferred power to his vice president, Dick Cheney, during the time of the procedure. Both times the public was informed in advance.
The modern era of relative transparency about a president’s health has its roots in Dwight Eisenhower, who suffered a heart attack in 1955 while in office.
After the administration initially misled reporters about what happened, it changed course with a torrent of information about her condition, including news of a successful bowel movement.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, here with his wife Eleanor, did his best to disguise his use of a wheelchair in the office © Hulton Archive
About a decade earlier, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died in office of a brain hemorrhage shortly after being elected to a fourth term; he was the most recent president to die in office from natural causes.
Roosevelt had required the use of a wheelchair after contracting polio in his 30s, though he did his best to avoid public awareness of his disability while campaigning for president and later in office.
“He did a lot to hide his illness from the public,” said Louis Picone, author of a story on presidential deaths called The president is dead. “He would have people standing next to him to support him.”
Roosevelt’s health would deteriorate dramatically as president as he suffered from heart disease. When he ran for reelection in 1944, a doctor who examined him recorded in a memorandum that Roosevelt would not finish his fourth term. The memo would not be published until the end of the century.
