Health and Medical History of President

Andrew Jackson

President #7: 1829-1837
Lived 1767-1845
"A tougher piece of slender manhood than Andrew Jackson never lived" 1a.
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Health and Medical History of President

Andrew Jackson

President #7: 1829-1837
Lived 1767-1845
Lived 1767-1845 2023 1776
Revolutionary War
1776-1783
War of 1812
1812-1815
Mexican-American War
1846-1848
Civil War
1861-1865
Spanish-American War
1898-1899
World War 1
1917-1918
World War 2
1941-1945
Korean War
1950-1953
Viet Nam War
1964-1975
Desert Storm
1990-1991
Bush's Wars
2001-2021
"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
slobbering
"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.
head and left hand
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.
smallpox
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.
depression
"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.
beanpole
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.
chest bullet
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.
left arm and shoulder
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.)
malaria
? Contracted in the swamps of Florida during the Seminole campaigns of 1818-1821 3f.
dysentery
? Contracted in the swamps of Florida during the Seminole campaigns of 1818-1821 3f. Chronic abdominal pain for years afterwards -- may have been lead 4.
bullet removal
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.
inaugural bruising
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.
diarrhea
Chronic abdominal pain for years.
addicted?
"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
dropsy
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
 
Meacham
437 reviews
Ampres Series
Wilentz
38 reviews
 
Brands
171 reviews
Kansas Series
Cole
2 reviews
Signature Series
Remini
77 reviews
Remini Series
Remini
16 reviews
Remini Series
Remini
11 reviews
Remini Series
Remini
7 reviews
Cited Sources
  1. Parton, James. Life of Andrew Jackson. New York: Mason Brothers, 1861.
    a  p.667

    Comment: The first of the multi-volume Jackson biographies. Three volumes.

  2. James, Marquis. The Life of Andrew Jackson. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1938.
    a  p.17  b  pp.25-26  c  pp.117-118  d  p.157

    Comment: 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.

  3. 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.356

    Comment: Well-written, coherent distillation of Remini's definitive three-volume biography of Jackson.

  4. 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.
  5. Sotos, John. Presidential disability and the twenty-fifth amendment. JAMA. 1995;274:799 [letter]. Pubmed: 7650802.
  6. MacMahon, Edward B. and Curry, Leonard. Medical Cover-Ups in the White House. Washington, DC: Farragut, 1987.
    a  p.9
  7. 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 servants

    Comment: 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).

  8. 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
Pubmed Search   (8 matches when checked in March 2013)

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