Fever Chart of a News
HANSER, RICHARD
IKE'S ILLNESS Fever Chart of a News Event By Richard Hanser At 8:50 a.m. on June 8, the following handwritten announcement was issued by James C. Hagerty, Press Secretary of the President, to the...
...Again, I will leave answers to that question to the medical...
...Q: "Doctor, we were told yesterday that you had rejected the word 'critical' as descriptive of the President's condition...
...Burrill Crohn, the "discoverer" of ileitis after whom it is sometimes named, as saying that "it is not a dangerous disorder...
...This last was prompted by a column by Washington correspondent Doris Fleeson, who had marshaled an array of previously published medical opinion, all of it at violent odds with the rosy view of ileitis taken by Republican strategists and the press in general...
...There's no reason at all to reevaluate the situation...
...He was immediately asked whether the President's heart had been examined, and he replied: "I can't answer that...
...I will give you answers to medical questions just as soon as I can...
...How would you describe it, as a layman...
...A: "What do you mean by administrative work...
...coauthor of the prize-winning Victory at Sea and author of several other documentary films, including Germany Today and Berlin Powderkeg...
...it had improved it...
...I do not know...
...A: "No...
...He was in Glens Falls to address a county political meeting...
...What seemed the sanest summary of the situation appeared not on the front pages but in a column by Roscoe Drummond of the New York Herald Tribune...
...A: "Now, boys...
...Few in public life or the press seemed inclined to leave any answers to the medical, while the medical showed no reluctance to make political forecasts...
...At 12:20 came the announcement that the President was suffering from ileitis, an inflammation of the lower portion of the small intestine...
...Meanwhile, there was no word from the one source which could possibly speak with any authority, the President himself...
...That, however, was not the limit of his activity, president bars soviet bid to 4 joint chiefs, the headlines read...
...Now, looking back on it now, how seriously ill would you say he was...
...ike's stepped up activity bolsters belief he'll run...
...In London, stock prices promptly turned downward...
...Q: "Are there any bills...
...on June 8, the following handwritten announcement was issued by James C. Hagerty, Press Secretary of the President, to the single reporter who chanced to be at the White House at that hour: "The President had an upset stomach and headache...
...The operation lasted one hour and 53 minutes, at which point the prejudice against the use of adjectives disappeared...
...Hall said: "No, no, there is no heart condition involved...
...The confident political predictions never lacked for medical support...
...Prognosis always dubious...
...Snyder reported any reaction by the President, how he reacted to his illness—or upset...
...A: "Well, I don't know what you mean by that...
...First picture was of President Eisenhower's intestines...
...At 10:30 a.m., Hagerty met a swarm of reporters for the first of 14 hectic press conferences...
...Q: "Dr...
...So effective was this maneuver that the syndicated columnist Thomas L. Stokes could not withhold an admiring comment: "Hagerty is demonstrating how much a knowing press-relations officer can accomplish politically on his own, with a bit of ingenuity...
...Do you know whether he was sleeping late this morning...
...All-man had never treated any of the men in question...
...This was on page 1. Deep inside the paper, in a column on the editorial page, James Reston was saying: " it is fairly obvious that a heart attack and a major emergency abdominal operation are not good for a man at 65, and therefore this second illness in nine months has reopened the serious Constitutional problems that were raised but never settled last autumn...
...A: "I am glad you changed the word.' Q: "Cheerful...
...He had not even been asked...
...A: " this certainly was an emergency procedure...
...He said that he and his colleagues "looked for rapid and complete recovery...
...The Paris newspaper France-Dimanche ran an inside story of the international situation embellished by pictures under the headline: "The destiny of the world can hang on these organs...
...Heaton, had not only not impaired the President's life expectancy...
...Dr...
...Q: "You expect no interruption, then, in the duties of the Presidency...
...It makes some of the expensive efforts of New York's Madison Ave...
...A: "1 don't believe there's any drugs being used...
...The first bill is not due until June 15...
...Hagerty flashed unqualified word of the operation's success at 4:55 a.m., three minutes after it ended and 16 minutes before the President was wheeled out of the operating room...
...This is just a stomach ache...
...On Monday, an anonymous "high Administration political figure"(medical qualifications not given) made the front page of the Times by predicting "a speedy and uneventful recovery for the President...
...I have said this afternoon that the doctors told me that it would be wrong to say he was in a critical condition...
...Q: "I mean the duties of the Presidency...
...the President's coronary occlusion last September was first described as a "digestive upset...
...Walter Lippmann made a similar observation: "They [Hagerty and Sherman Adams,the Presidential assistant] did not allow the question to arise as to whether the President was disabled and unable to discharge his powers and duties...
...While these dispatches were being filed, Mr...
...Hagerty had been asked at another press conference: Q: "Can you tell us who will take over the administrative work during this disability...
...A: "Unrelieved, a gangrenous bowel will cause death...
...Q: "You said earlier that the President was still in bed when you were over there this morning...
...Q: "You have to progress from something to something...
...A: "In these cases, one faces the possibility of a compromise of the bowel proximo to the obstruction which, if unrelieved, will or can produce gangrene of the bowel, which in turn is a very serious situation...
...Dr...
...said that the operation "may have removed a source that has given him trouble and distress in the past and thus make him a physically stronger and more vigorous candidate than he might otherwise have been...
...It was remarked that Dr...
...The President's condition was not merely satisfactory...
...A White House aide, described as knowing the President "as well as any and better than most...
...A: "Well, any intestinal obstruction we regard as serious until it is relieved...
...Hagerty countered by quoting his own doctors: Dr...
...In the days immediately following the operation, the Press Secretary announced that President Eisenhower had recovered sufficiently to sign several papers...
...of June 9, Saturday, another press conference was held at which Hagerty was asked: "Has any thought been given to the exercise of Presidential powers in case he becomes incapacitated for several days or a period of time ?" A: "No, none at all...
...Q: "Still wrong to say he is in a critical condition...
...David Allman, a candidate for the AMA presidency, told reporters that "when President Eisenhower recovers he will be in better physical condition than any of his opponents, Republican or Democrat, have ever been in their lives...
...Crohn, from his home in New Milford, Connecticut, told the New York Times over the phone that, although he had no personal knowledge of the President's case, he was sure that the operation was a success...
...They said his condition was progressing satisfactorily...
...The adjective, now back in full favor, was freely used in both medical bulletins and headlines, usually in the superlative degree...
...By June 15, a week after the "upset stomach," such medical disputation was being relegated to the inside of the paper, if it was printed at all, and seemed merely academic to many...
...From Glens Falls, N.Y., Leonard W. Hall, the Republican National Chairman, assured the Associated Press that the news on President Eisenhower's illness would be "just as frank as it has been in the past...
...Q: "Not critical, but what...
...A: "I don't anticipate any...
...In Paris, the black-market rate for the American dollar plunged 10 per cent...
...Heaton and his colleagues fully agreed with this statement...
...Of the three sentences in the first official bulletin, the second could be taken at face value...
...A dozen leading surgeons, heart experts and specialists, some of them hastily summoned by plane, were in consultation during the afternoon at Walter Reed...
...Politics and medicine had by now become irretrievably entangled...
...It was no longer surprising to read a headline like: hagerty doubts return of ileitis...
...A: "No, I do not...
...And later: Q: "Can you tell us whether Dr...
...Serious...
...Heaton's unequivocal statement, concurred in by his colleagues, that he saw no reason why the President should not run again...
...was quoted: "Of course, the President will have to test himself again...
...Q: "Drug-induced or not...
...In Chicago, where the American Medical Association was meeting, Dr...
...Under a Washington dateline of June 9, the same day the operation took place, the New York Times reported: "The White House and the Republican high command moved swiftly to eliminate doubts that the President would run again...
...The operation, according to Dr...
...Major General Leonard D. Heaton, the Commandant of Walter Reed Hospital who performed the operation, was the spokesman...
...The same day David Lawrence, in the New York Herald Tribune and other papers across the country, wrote that when the President returned to the golf course and his trips to Gettysburg, the public would "forget all about his stomach upset...
...His physicians announced that he left the operating room in "excellent" condition...
...The only quotation attributed to him since the start of his illness was a remark made to a doctor after regaining consciousness in the early hours of June 9: "What a bellyache...
...He has also contributed extensively to Reader's Digest, Life and the New York Times...
...A: "Not critical...
...One thing was sure: An international news event was in the making...
...At 8:35, another bulletin was released: "The Presidents condition is progressing satisfactorily no change in the previously reported condition except that the President is resting more comfortably...
...The opening sentence had an ominous ring...
...Snyder examined his heart...
...There is no indication for immediate surgery...
...At 2:59 a.m., the President underwent emergency surgery to correct the obstruction in his ileum...
...Q: "Does that mean his condition is fair--had-A: "I am not going to use any adjectives...
...Governor Walter J. Kohler of Wisconsin, in New York to receive a plaque from the National Republican Club, reported the prevailing sentiment in the Middle West as he saw it: "We have found the bulletins so reassuring," he said, "that we don't even think of his fitness as an issue...
...Senator Karl E. Mundt (R.S.D...
...In reply to a question...
...Always serious...
...Heaton, does a gangrenous bowel usually cause death...
...On Saturday afternoon, the doctors confronted the reporters for the first time...
...Richard Hanser has been a newspaper reporter, columnist and city editor...
...Miss Fleeson cited, among others, the latest edition of Risk Appraisal by Dr...
...Snyder has been with him since morning...
...They haven't given me an adjective...
...You mean signatures...
...Harry W. Dingham, a life-insurance company consultant: "Ileitis, regional ?Crohn's disease...
...A: "It is not an illness...
...Postmaster General Arthur E. Summer-field argued that the operation had dispelled any concern over the President's heart and hence "should encourage him to run...
...He described the President's case as "the most common and safest type...
...at publicity appear pale and ineffectual by comparison.' The Fair Dealing New York Post also noted these efforts in an editorial titled "The Medicine of Politics," pointing out that the President still had a stomach drainage tube in his nose, was being fed intravenously, and was under mild sedation...
...They haven't said bad, serious, fair, critical...
...Whether or not there was anything wrong with the President's heart could not have been known for certain when the bulletin was issued...
...He quoted Dr...
...A (by Hagerty): "I say I do not know the details of it--lookit!--You know that I am not a doctor...
...A conscious effort is now being made," wrote Mr...
...Crohn himself and Dr...
...Q: "You have never given us a classification...
...Heaton, who had said: "In this [the President's] age group we do not look for any further extension of the disease process...
...Reston, "to give the impression that the President already is back in command of the Administration, five days after an emergency operation...
...The headlines in the Sunday papers were less concerned with these clinical aspects of the President's illness than with Dr...
...a translator and critic...
...Recurrence is distressingly high...
...Heavy selling began with the opening of the New York Stock Exchange...
...The reporters kept trying...
...He won't leave it to others to bring up...
...I am not going to answer any more questions...
...And later: Q: "Could this be characterized as an emergency operation, in view of what you said about the dangers...
...A: "They most certainly have...
...Next came one of Anthony Eden's gall bladder, then Khruschev's liver, Pope Pius's stomach, Mao Tse-tung's lungs and Winston Churchill's brains...
...A: "Nowlookit—let's get this stuff straight...
...Vice President Nixon "felt in his heart" that the President would run again, a sentiment enthusiastically echoed by Leonard Hall and every other party spokesman interviewed...
...Newsweek headline: the trouble with the president-painful but mild...
...Hell bring it up himself and he can't possibly know whether he should run until he has tested himself again fully...
...Q: "From what, Jim...
...Q: "General Heaton, what would have happened if you had not operated, in your opinion...
...At 12:38 a.m...
...it was "most satisfactory...
...There is nothing wrong with his heart...
...In view of the categorical statement in the first bulletin, the matter was pressed: Q (by unnamed reporter): "You say there is nothing wrong with his heart and you say you don't know whether Dr...
...By 1:40, "as a precautionary measure," he had been taken by stretcher and ambulance to Walter Reed Hospital where X-rays revealed a partial obstruction of the ileum...
Vol. 39 • July 1956 • No. 27
