Health and Medical History of President
Andrew Jackson
President #7: 1829-1837
Lived 1767-1845
Lived 1767-1845
"A tougher piece of slender manhood than Andrew Jackson never lived"
1a.
Health and Medical History of President
Andrew Jackson
President #7: 1829-1837
Lived 1767-1845
Lived 1767-1845
↓
Lived 1767-1845
2023
1776
Revolutionary War1776-1783
War of 18121812-1815
Mexican-American War1846-1848
Civil War1861-1865
Spanish-American War1898-1899
World War 11917-1918
World War 21941-1945
Korean War1950-1953
Viet Nam War1964-1975
Desert Storm1990-1991
Bush's Wars2001-2021
Lived 1767-1845
2023
1776
Revolutionary War1776-1783War of 18121812-1815Mexican-American War1846-1848Civil War1861-1865Spanish-American War1898-1899World War 11917-1918World War 21941-1945Korean War1950-1953Viet Nam War1964-1975Desert Storm1990-1991Bush's Wars2001-2021
"A tougher piece of slender manhood than Andrew Jackson never lived"
1a.
 |
UNDER CONSTRUCTION |
Maladies & Conditions
· slobbering · head and left hand · smallpox · depression · beanpole · chest bullet · left arm and shoulder · malaria · dysentery · bullet removal · inaugural bruising · diarrhea · addicted? · dropsy
Odds & Ends ·
Doctors ·
Resources ·
Cited Sources
Maladies and Conditions
"Andy entered his thirteenth year a tall, lean, remarkably agile, freckle-faced boy with
bright blue eyes, a shock of tousled hair that was almost red and a temper in keeping. He would
fight at the drop of a hat, by that means mitigating a misfortune that would have ruined the
prestige of an ordinary boy. Andy had a habit of 'slobbering' which he was unable to control
until almost grown, but a jest at this circumstance spelled combat, whatever the odds"
2a.
During the Revolutionary War, 14 year old Andrew Jackson and his older brother Robert were
captured by
British soldiers in the Battle of Hanging Rock.
3a
The officer in command ordered Jackson to clean his boots. Jackson refused.
The officer raised his sword to strike a violent blow at the boy's head. Jackson ducked and
threw up his left hand.
"It was cut to the bone, and a gash on his head left a white scar that Andrew Jackson
carried through a long life that profited little to England or any Englishman"
2b.
Jackson's mother persuaded the British to release her boys, but by this time both had contracted
smallpox. Jackson's mother and his critically ill brother rode horseback on the 45 mile journey
home. Andrew walked barefoot and without a jacket, despite a driving rain the last day of the
trek.
Robert died two days later. Andrew was delirious and in mortal danger. Over several months,
he
slowly recovered. When Andrew seemed out of danger, his mother left to nurse prisoners of war
in
Charleston, but contracted cholera there and died
3b.
"The American Revolution was one long agony for Andrew Jackson.... He experienced hardship,
pain, disease, multiple wounds of the head and fingers, and grief arising from the annihilation
of his immediate family. [His oldest brother, Hugh, had died of heat stroke after the Battle
of
Stono Ferry.] He emerged from the Revolution burdened with sorrow and a deep-seated depression....
He never forgot the price that he and others had paid" to secure Liberty
3b.
As an adult, Jackson was six feet tall, but never weighed over 145 pounds
3c.
His thin frame actually saved his life in the 1806 duel with Charles Dickinson. Dickinson was
an expert marksman, while Jackson was neither a quick shot nor an epecially good one. Jackson
decided not to compete with Dickinson for the first shot, but to take the hit, and rely on
his
willpower to sustain himself until he could aim deliberately and shoot to kill. On the day
of the
duel, Jackson wore a dark blue frock coat and trousers of the same material. Dickinson got
a
shot off first, as Jackson had planned. James
2c
describes what happened:
A fleck of dust rose from Jackson's coat and his left hand clutched his chest. For an instant he thought himself dying, but, fighting for self-command, slowly he raised his pistol.
Dickinson recoiled a step horror-stricken. "My God! Have I missed him?"
Overton [Jackson's second] presented his pistol. "Back to the mark, sir!"
Dickinson folded his arms. Jackson's spare frame straightened. He aimed... and fired. Dickinson swayed to the ground... [and later died].
[Jackson, too, was wounded, to the point where his left boot had filled with blood.]
Jackson's surgeon found that Dickinson's aim had been perfectly true, but he had judged the position of Jackson's heart by the set of his coat, and Jackson wore his coats loosely on account of the excessive slenderness of his figure.
Dickinson's bullet shattered two of Jackson's ribs and buried itself in his chest, near his
heart.
Jackson's left boot filled with blood from the wound. More than a month passed before he could
move around without difficulty. The wound never properly healed and caused Jackson considerable
discomfort for the rest of his nearly 40 years
3d.
During a September 1813 gunfight with the Benton brothers in downtown Nashville, the cause
of
which is a little cloudy, Jackson was shot by a slug and a ball. The slug shattered his left
shoulder and the ball embedded against his left humerus. Jackson bled profusely, soaking two
mattresses after being moved to a room in the Nashville Inn. Every physician in town tried
to stanch the flow of blood, and all but one recommended amputation of the left arm. Jackson
refused: "I'll keep my arm" was the last thing he said before becoming unconscious.
Both wounds were dressed with poultices. Jackson was utterly prostrate from the great loss
of
blood -- it was three weeks before he could leave his bed
3e.
(But, by 34 days after the shooting, Jackson was commanding troops in the field
2d.)
? Contracted in the swamps of Florida during the Seminole campaigns of 1818-1821
3f.
By 1831, Jesse Benton's 1813 bullet was migrating and causing periods of intense discomfort.
Jackson considered
going to Philadelphia to have it removed, but decided against it "because of the political
motives which would have been imputed"
5.
So, in January 1832,
Dr. Thomas Harris,
chief of the Navy's Bureau of Medicine, was summoned to the White House to remove the bullet
6a.
"No anesthesia was available, of course, so Jackson simply bared his arm, gritted his
jaws,... and said `Go ahead.' The surgeon made an incision, squeezed the arm, and out popped
[the bullet]"
3g.
Jackson's health improved at once, which has led to speculation that the
bullet was causing or contributing to lead poisoning, for which there is some evidence
4.
The famously uncontrolled inaugural reception at the White House in 1829,
which devolved into fist-fights and an exodus through the windows,
left Jackson bruised and battered
7a.
"Now, Doctor, I can do anything you think proper, except give up coffee and tobacco."
Later in life Jackson suffered headaches from tobacco use [Parton].
8a
Jackson most probably died of heart failure. He started experiencing
near suffocating shortness of breath toward the beginning of 1845. Early in April, his feet
and
legs swelled, then his hands and abdomen, prompting him to write:
"It may be that my life ends in dropsy, all means hitherto used to stay the swelling has
now failed to check it"
3h
He had been unable to lie flat for several months, and required propping-up with pillows in
both his bed at night and his chair during the day.
By late spring his face was edematous, too: "I am a blubber of water."
3i
Doctors
Before Presidency
Resources
Cited Sources
- Parton, James. Life of Andrew Jackson. New York: Mason Brothers, 1861.
a p.667Comment: The first of the multi-volume Jackson biographies. Three volumes.
- James, Marquis. The Life of Andrew Jackson. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1938.
a p.17 b pp.25-26 c pp.117-118 d p.157Comment: A wonderful book that won the Pulitzer Prize for biography. It is actually composed of two books that were originally published separately: The Border Captain and Andrew Jackson: Portrait of a President.
- Remini, Robert V. The Life of Andrew Jackson. New York: Penguin, 1990 (hardback 1988).
a p.8 b p.9 c p.7 d p.54 e p.70 f p.137 g p.223 h p.355 i p.356Comment: Well-written, coherent distillation of Remini's definitive three-volume biography of Jackson.
- Deppisch LM, Centeno JA, Gemmel DJ, Torres NL. Andrew Jackson's exposure to mercury and lead: poisoned president?. JAMA. 1999 Aug 11;282(6):569-71.
- Sotos, John. Presidential disability and the twenty-fifth amendment. JAMA. 1995;274:799 [letter]. Pubmed: 7650802.
- MacMahon, Edward B. and Curry, Leonard. Medical Cover-Ups in the White House. Washington, DC: Farragut, 1987.
a p.9
- Parks, Lillian Rogers. My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House. New York: Fleet Publishing, 1961.
a pp.210-211; this is word-of-mouth lore passed through generations of White House servantsComment: This book stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for 26 weeks, prompting Jacqueline Kennedy to require all staff at the White House to sign a pledge agreeing not to write about their experiences (NY Times, page B8, Nov. 12, 1997). Parks's mother, a maid at the White House from 1909-1939, had actually been encouraged by Eleanor Roosevelt to write and publish a memoir (p260).
- James, Marquis. Andrew Jackson: Portrait of a President. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, unknown year (originally published in 1937 by Bobbs-Merrill).
a p.340
Other Sources
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