The Health of the First Ladies: Medical Histories from Martha Washington to Michelle Obama (34 page)

Frances “Frankie” Cleveland, the young wife of Grover Cleveland and the only first lady to become a mother in the White House (Library of Congress).

Dr. Bryant of New York City practiced medicine in the days before medical specialization. Not only was he an expert surgeon who removed the president’s cancer aboard a boat, he also delivered the first two Cleveland children. The cancer surgery was a complete success; the tumor neither recurred nor spread during Grover Cleveland’s lifetime. Bryant was the longtime family physician and friend of the Clevelands. After the death of Ruth, their first daughter, in January 1904, from diphtheria, Dr. Bryant subsequently cultured all the members of the family. Antitoxin was administered but possibly too late.
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Frankie had five successful pregnancies between 1891 and 1903—three sons and two daughters. The first child, Ruth, was born after “rather a long labor—but not at all severe.” Except for Ruth, all the children were long-lived. The youngest, Francis Grover Cleveland, died in 1995 at the age of ninety-two. Perhaps Frankie wished that her much older husband would be able to enjoy his offspring. Her third pregnancy, with Marion in 1895 while Cleveland was still president, evoked this comment: “I feel that it is only fair to their father to have them as young as he can.” Marion was born at Grey Gables and not in the White House.
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The Clevelands retired to Princeton, where the ex-president died in 1908. His widow remarried; on February 10, 1913, she wed Princeton professor Thomas Jex Preston in the home of the Princeton president, John Grier Hibben, who officiated. Frankie was the first presidential widow to remarry, succeeded only by Jackie Kennedy. To minimize any disapproval, the wedding plans were kept clandestine. But disapproval occurred nevertheless. Mrs. Cleveland, like Mrs. Kennedy after her, was a national monument and it distressed many people that the base was of clay.
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The former first lady was in good health for many years. She died in her sleep in Baltimore, Maryland, fifty-one years after leaving the White House.
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“Edith continued to find her identity in motherhood.” In a letter to her sister, she wrote, “The baby trunk made me rather sad…. I shall keep the little things another year in the hope of using them”
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Edith Kermit Carow was the second wife of Teddy Roosevelt (TR). On October 27, 1880, the twenty-two-year-old future president married nineteen-year-old Alice Hathaway Lee in Brookline, Massachusetts. Three and a half years later Alice Roosevelt died, two days after giving birth to a daughter, named Alice after her mother. The cause of death was toxemia of pregnancy with acute kidney failure.
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Edith Carow, both a childhood playmate and the teenage sweetheart of Theodore Roosevelt, became his second wife at Saint George Church, in Mayfair, London, on December 2, 1886. He was twenty-eight and she twenty-five. The wedding took place in England as TR was sensitive that a second marriage soon (two and one half years) after Alice’s death would be viewed as a social faux pas by the Roosevelts’ New York circle of friends.
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Edith and TR were married for thirty-three years, the marriage a happy, supportive, and successful one. Edith was a strong and healthy woman whose physical endurance in no way hindered or obstructed Roosevelt’s political career. She was a strength as first lady (1901–1909); conversely the responsibilities of being first lady in no way were a burden to Edith. She was a success both socially and as the manager of the White House. She was credited with “a brilliant social regime, even creating a ‘social cabinet’ composed of the wives of cabinet members.” Another reporter summarized the first lady’s tenure: “[S]he presided as mistress of the White House (1901–1909) with grace and distinction…. She was an excellent conversationalist and a musician of more than ordinary attainments.” However, her primary responsibility continued to be the role of mother to her children.
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Only three significant medical events occurred before Mrs. Cleveland’s death at eighty-seven years of age. The first was an abdominal abscess subsequent to the birth of her fifth child. The second event took place in September 1911. While riding at Sagamore Hill, the Roosevelt’s Long Island home, Edith was knocked senseless after falling from her horse. She remained comatose for 36 hours before gaining consciousness, and she became lucid only at intervals during the next nine days. Mrs. Roosevelt did not remember the accident and continued to suffer from bad headaches. It was many weeks before she was well enough to go outside.
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Edith Roosevelt with Theodore Roosevelt and their five children. She had at least one miscarriage in the White House (Library of Congress).

Edith Roosevelt, the wife of Theodore Roosevelt, holding Quentin, their youngest son (Library of Congress).

In 1935 Edith broke her hip after a fall and was hospitalized for four months. After twenty-nine years as a widow, Edith Roosevelt died with congestive heart failure and arteriosclerosis.
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Edith Carow Roosevelt gave birth to five healthy children, four sons and one daughter, within a ten-year period (1887–1897). All labors but one were quick. The exception was the 1891 parturition of her third child, Ethel, her only daughter. This was described as a long and difficult labor. Two births may have been premature. All the babies were born at the Roosevelts’ homes, in New York City, Sagamore Hill, or Washington, D.C. It is likely that a physician attended all the deliveries.
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Mrs. Roosevelt’s first postpartum period was problematic, partially due to postpartum depression and partially because of contemporary postnatal practices. Edith remained in bed for two weeks wrapped up like a mummy.
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A second postpartum event was more serious. On January 17, 1898, four months after the birth of Quentin, Edith’s youngest child, she was stricken with fever, pains and “sciatica.” These symptoms persisted for five weeks until the patient noticed a lower abdominal swelling. Between 1890 and 1930 prominent Washingtonians frequently depended upon the expertise of staff physicians from Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore. The renowned Dr. William Osler, chairman of its Department of Medicine, was asked for his opinion. After his examination, Osler declared that Edith was critically ill from an abscess of the psoas muscle. He recommended an immediate operation. A gynecologist confirmed Osler’s diagnosis and operated on March 6. The abscess was drained through an open abdominal wound. Weeks passed, until April 4 when the patient was well enough to go for a carriage ride. On April 11, 1898, TR volunteered for military service in the Spanish-American War. He left Edith and his children behind in Washington to ride up San Juan Hill and into the annals of history.
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First lady Edith Roosevelt, raising five children as well as a stepdaughter, Alice, from her husband’s first marriage, still desired to increase the size of her family. She previously had suffered at least one miscarriage, in August 1888, and perhaps more.
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As a resident in the White House she continued to think about motherhood and expressed her desire to Admiral Presley Rixey, then the White House physician. However, Rixey did not find Edith’s desire to become pregnant at forty-one reasonable.
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“[A]s First Lady, Edith twice became pregnant, although miscarriage intervened.” In spring 1902, the first lady was most likely pregnant. Rumors circulated in Washington that Mrs. Roosevelt was expecting. A joyful letter to her sister Emily Carow seemed to confirm her physical state: “I have the most enormous appetite, though I loathe anything sweet, can’t touch wine and care but little for tea and coffee! Meat seems to appeal to me!” A disappointed and cryptic May 9 entry in her diary signaled a miscarriage: “Was taken sick in night.”
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A year later, a second White House pregnancy was suggested. During the pre–Lenten social activities in 1903, while arranging the dinner before her last musicale, Edith felt faint and had to retire upstairs. She was confined to bed for two days.
Town Topics
mused that it was the stork.
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“The lovely lady Presidentress is attended on reception-days by twelve maids of honor, six on either side, dressed all alike…. Her serene loveliness receives upon a raised platform, wearing a headdress formed of bugles and resembling a crown.”
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Julia Gardiner became the second-youngest first lady. In 1844, at age twenty-four, she married the widower president, John Tyler. Her reign also was distinctive, as her White House residence was the briefest of that of any other first lady, a mere eight months.

David Gardiner, wealthy and the father of two vivacious and very pretty daughters, Julia and Margaret, became, with his daughters, part of President John Tyler’s social family. Julia Gardiner was born into wealth and enjoyed a pampered and affluent lifestyle, one without significant responsibilities. The unmarried Miss Gardiner was very attractive, socially adept and flirtatious.
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The invalid first lady, Letitia Tyler, whose marriage to John Tyler produced eight children, died on September 10, 1842.
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The president proposed marriage to the vivacious Julia fewer than six months later.
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Miss Gardiner demurred until a calamity killed her father. On February 28, 1844, an explosion aboard the navy cutter
Princeton
killed David Gardiner and Tyler’s secretaries of state and the navy. President Tyler and Julia Gardiner were aboard but were uninjured. Dolley Madison was also on the ship; the presidential widow would become Julia’s mentor in adapting to Washington’s social decorum.
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The Tyler romance accelerated and Miss Gardiner married the fifty-four-year-old president in a quasi-secret ceremony in the Church of the Ascension in New York City on June 26, 1844. The wedding plans were so clandestine that many characterized their marriage as an elopement.