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Franklin Roosevelt: Lab Slip Showing Anemia

   
 
anemia from hemorrhoids In May 1941, FDR had severe iron deficiency anemia. His hemoglobin level was 4.5g/100ml, apparently due to bleeding hemorrhoids. The anemia responded quickly to therapy with ferrous sulfate. Interestingly, there were no cardiac symptoms at the time. [2] The lab slip showing this result survives.

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 The lab slip shown below is from the Roosevelt Library. The President's physician, Dr. Ross T. McIntire, used a laughably transparent pseudonym for his patient.

The white blood cell count ("W.B.C.") is not reduced, suggesting (but not proving) the anemia was not due to bone marrow failure.

At first Dr. Zebra thought there was a dissociation between the hemoglobin level ("Hgb" on the lab slip) and the hematocrit ("Grams %"). The former measures the amount of hemoglobin protein in the blood. Hematocrit measures the amount of space in the blood that is occupied by red blood cells. Normally the hematocrit is three times the value of the hemoglobin, but the lab slip shows the hematocrit as SEVEN times larger than the hemoglobin.

Examination of other lab slips discloses that the "Grams %" is not really a hematocrit measurement. It is more like "percentage of normal hemoglobin level." Thus, even though McIntire requested a hematocrit number, he was not given one.

From the red blood cell count and the hemoglobin, it should be possible to calculate a mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC).

Image courtesy of Dr. Steven Lamazow. [7]

     Resources[Top]
Disclosure: Doctor Zebra gets a few pennies if you click & buy from Amazon.
  1. Bollet, Alfred Jay. Plagues and Poxes: The Impact of Human History on Epidemic Disease. Revised edition. New York: Demos, 2004. ISBN 1-888799-79-X @ Amazon
        As reviewed in New Engl J Med. 2005;352:1055-1056.

  2. Bruenn, HG. Clinical notes on the illness and death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Ann Int Med. 1970;72: 579-591. Pubmed.

  3. Dallek, Robert. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963. Boston: Little, Brown, 2003. ISBN 0-316-17238-3 @ Amazon   [a] p. 198

  4. Dugan, James. Bedlam in the boudoir. Colliers. 22 Feb. 1947; pages 17, 69-70.
        Credibility is dubious. Just before a list of Presidents, the article states: "Twenty of the 32 Presidents ... are proved or believed on a thick web of circumstance to have been nocturnal nuisances in the White House."

  5. Evans, Hugh E. The Hidden Campaign: FDR's Health and the 1944 Election. Armonk, NY: M.E.Sharpe, 2002. ISBN 0765608553 @ Amazon

  6. Gary, Ralph. Following Lincoln's Footsteps. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001. ISBN 0-7867-09413 @ Amazon

  7. Goldsmith, HS. Unanswered mysteries in the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Surgery, Gynecology, & Obstetrics. 1979;149: 899-908. Pubmed.

  8. Katz, SL. From culture to vaccine -- Salk and Sabin. New England Journal of Medicine. 2004; 351: 1485-1487.

  9. MacMahon, Edward B. and Curry, Leonard. Medical Cover-Ups in the White House. Washington, DC: Farragut, 1987. ISBN 0-918535-01-8 @ Amazon

  10. McIntire, RT. White House Physician. New York: GP Putnam's Sons, 1946.
        McIntire was FDR's White House physician. Today, there is a street named after him at the Naval Hospital complex in San Diego.

  11. Montgomery-Massingberd, Hugh (ed). Burke's Presidential Families of the United States of American. 2nd ed. London: Burke's Peerage Limited, 1981. ISBN 0-85011-033-5 @ Amazon
        Enumerates the ancestors and descendants of American presidents up through Ronald Reagan.

  12. Stoddard, Henry L. It Costs to Be President. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938.   [a] p. 141
        Stoddard was editor and owner of the New York Evening Mail from 1900 to 1925.

  13. The Franklin Roosevelt web page at the White House.

  14.  (29 matches when checked in November 2003)
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