I think the only thing 99% of Americans know about Grover Cleveland is that he’s the guy who was president for two non-consecutive terms. But he was president during one of the most turbulent decades of the post-Civil War era, and his presidency was full of controversy. I have to admit falling into the majority of people who know nothing about him, so I was genuinely intrigued by this Neatorama post from last week about his very serious bout with cancer and the intense effort to cover up the severity of his illness and the surgery. According to Wikipedia, there was much debate over the years about the nature of his disease, but in the 1980s tissue analysis showed that it was a non-lethal form of carcinoma.
The story is reminiscent of several other presidents with health issues hidden from the general public: Franklin Roosevelt, of course, comes immediately to mind. Woodrow Wilson’s stroke in 1919 was so debilitating that it is widely believed that his wife acted as de facto president during the last year and a half of his second term. Still not publicly well known is the extent of John F. Kennedy’s Addison’s disease, which had left him bedridden as a child and reliant on steroids as an adult. These days if Barack Obama so much as sneezed in public there would be 24/7 media coverage and calls for him to resign “for health reasons”.
