Washington DC: The Secret Illnesses of Presidents with Sharon McMahon

Here's Where It Gets Interesting

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2022

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In today’s solo episode, Sharon dives into a topic the American public has long been interested in: the illnesses of past presidents. Sharon gives details about the secretive ways three of our former presidents–Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt–kept the people in the dark about their surgeries and sicknesses. She talks about how presidential health was often tied to the nation’s health and success, and how that ultimately shifted during the Eisenhower Administration as transparency and medical technology evolved.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friends, welcome. So excited to have you with me today and today I want to talk about
0:05.8	Washington DC and specifically some topics related to a few presidents that I know interests you. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon
0:17.0	McMan and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Okay, I know this interests you because you have told me. I'm not even
0:27.4	guessing. I know it's true. Many people are fascinated by the secret illnesses of presidents.
0:34.9	So today I want to share just a couple of secret illnesses with you
0:39.6	because they're fascinating.
0:40.8	We're so used to getting information at warp speed. What are they doing now? Where are they now? Are they traveling to the
0:48.1	hospital in an ambulance or a black car? You know what I mean? Like right now we get information so quickly and that was absolutely not the case in America's past.
0:57.0	You probably know that we've had 46 presidents, but remember that we've only had 45 men serve as 46 presidents, and that is because Grover Cleveland was both the 22nd and the 24th president.
1:10.8	He served his first term from 1885 to 1889 and his second term from
1:16.9	1893 to 1897. So why did he leave office in the middle? He got defeated. He got defeated by
1:25.2	Benjamin Harrison who was the ground son of William Henry Harrison who I've
1:29.9	done an episode on before called President of the Month. So feel free to listen to
1:33.9	the episode about William Henry and Benjamin Harrison was his grandson.
1:37.3	So when Cleveland took office again, it was during a very tumultuous time in US history.
1:43.2	The country was getting ready to enter an economic depression.
1:47.6	And back then, they did not have a lot of the social safety net
1:51.0	supports that we have today that help people in if the event of a very serious
1:56.3	scenario they didn't have social security they didn't have WIC or medicare that you could get if you
2:02.4	really were on financial hard time.
2:04.0	So a depression was something that was very much to be avoided.
2:10.0	Shortly after Cleveland took office for the second time, he was a healthy middle-aged man with a real bushy mustache,
	...

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