William Howard Taft, who served as the 27th President of the United States of America almost a century ago (1909-1913), was unique in many ways. At 335 lbs, he was the heaviest US President ever to occupy the White House. By age 40, he was already overweight at 300 lbs. While taking a bath soon after his presidential inauguration, he got hopelessly trapped in the bathtub in the presidential mansion and had to be rescued by aides.
To spare him future embarrassments, a huge bathtub was installed for his exclusive use. His senior staff and other Congressional leaders soon noticed that the President seemed to be perpetually sleepy. He fell asleep at the dining table while talking to important guests, Speaker of the House and justices of the Supreme Court, and often in mid-sentence. Remarkably, he picked up the conversation when he woke up, 10 or 15 minutes later, exactly where he had left off. Once, while waiting for his portrait to be made, he briefly fell asleep standing. During the Sunday church service sitting in the front row, he would frequently doze off and snore loudly to the discomfiture of his wife.
The occasion of his own inauguration as the President of the United States did not seem to have diminished his predilection for sleep. The night before inauguration day, a huge winter storm enveloped the Washington area. Roads became impassible and the special inaugural dress ordered by Mrs Taft from a tailoring firm in New York, to her bitter disappointment, failed to arrive in time for the ceremony. While the First Lady fretted about, the president-elect remained serene, sat down and promptly went to sleep.
In cabinet meetings and during other important discussions, Mrs Taft, a highly intelligent and politically shrewd woman, would gently nudge her husband in an attempt to wake him up and protect him from adverse publicity. While to other casual observers the President seemed to be sleeping and resting most of the time, the fact was he never had a night of restful sleep. His constant state of somnolence was perceived by his fellow politicians in those days as some kind of eccentricity, a quirk of personality, even though he looked increasingly tired, both mentally and physically. His heart was nearly failing, his blood pressure escalated, the body neared exhaustion. Few appreciated that he was, in fact, unwell.
The consequences of his deteriorating state of health and the resulting perception of incapacity were not difficult to predict. President Taft lost his election for a second term in 1912, a defeat that probably saved his life. Once out of the White House, he felt relieved, lost a lot of weight and was finally able to stabilize it at 250 lbs. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson as the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Taft remains the only person in history to have served as both President and Chief Justice. He was a transformed man. He served in this position with great distinction for nine years, remaining alert and attentive during his entire career on the bench. Most of his sleepiness and lethargy, along with many of his health problems, disappeared. When he died in 1930 at the age of 72, Taft was credited with one of the most successful careers on the US Supreme Court.
Now, nearly three-quarters of a century after his death, the debate has been revived in the US as to what caused President Taft to be constantly sleepy. Although he had access to the best medical advice available at the time, no one reached a definitive diagnosis of his malaise. In a recent publication in the medical journal, Chest, a cardiologist and medical historian, Dr John Sotos, has reexamined Taft’s medical history and concluded that President Taft suffered from the disease known as obstructive sleep apnea, a diagnosis that can explain all or most of his symptoms. This interesting medical case has aroused the curiosity of journalists as well and has been the subject of an article by David Brown in the Washington Post recently. The disease from which President Taft suffered is now well recognized and is not uncommon among overweight people.
Questions have been raised whether President Taft’s various judgments as President were influenced by his sleep apnea problem. The consensus appears to be that he made no major erroneous decisions that can be attributed to his medical condition.
Taft is not the only celebrity from the past whose medical history has elicited interest and scrutiny from contemporary historians. Until the recent spectacular progress in medicine, means of diagnosis were limited and many of today’s common diseases had not been recognized. For example, it is now believed that the first US President, George Washington, suffered from a genetic defect known as Klinefelter’s syndrome, an abnormality of sex chromosomes in men, characterized by large breasts and small testicles. The cause of death of Napoleon Bonaparte has remained a matter of much controversy even though two centuries have passed since he died. Some researchers believe that he was poisoned by an administration of arsenic during his incarceration in St Helena Island. Now, a French doctor claims that he suffered from stomach cancer. No one, however, can be sure after all these years.
In Pakistan, during Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s terminal illness, when Lieutenant-Colonel Ilahi Bakhsh was called from Lahore to attend him at Ziarat on July 21, 1948, the doctor had no knowledge of the nature of the Quaid’s illness. He had had no access to his patient’s prior medical records. It is now assumed that the Quaid-i-Azam had tuberculosis or perhaps lung cancer, or both. When on February 11, 1968, President Ayub Khan suffered a massive heart attack, it was initially reported as a case of mild pneumonia, a less ominous disease. The true nature of his ailment was not disclosed to the public until his British physician, Dr John Goodwyn, refused to sign false medical bulletins.
It might be interesting to consider how the American public and press would have reacted to President Taft’s constant drowsiness had he occupied the White House in this day and age.
