A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [161]
On the evening of June 13, Keen appeared at Pier A in New York and was taken by launch to the Oneida, anchored off the battery in Lower Manhattan. The entire medical team was already on board, plus a tank of nitrous oxide and a supply of ether. An hour later, the presidential party consisting of Cleveland, Lamont, and Dr. Bryant arrived. Cleveland tried to put everyone at ease. He was introduced to Keen and invited all to sit on deck and enjoy the night breeze. He even lit up a cigar! They chatted for an hour and Keen, who had never met Cleveland, observed that the president seemed anxious about one thing: Would he be able to carry on the duties of office and speak in public without anyone knowing about the operation? Keen explained that if everything went well, his appearance would be normal, though he might have a defective speech pattern. Cleveland seemed to accept this. He spoke about the burdens of the presidency.
“Oh, Dr. Keen, those office-seekers. Those office-seekers. They haunt me even in my dreams.”
Cleveland slept well that evening, having declined the offer of a sedative. The next morning, Keen examined the president. Cleveland said he was positive that the rough spot inside his mouth was of recent origin and had not been present when he took the oath of office on March 4. Probing the ulcerous growth, Keen said it was “unquestionably malignant.” Surprisingly, though Cleveland weighed almost three hundred pounds, Keen found little evidence of arteriosclerosis. His pulse was ninety, within normal range. But Keen was worried—not necessarily about the operation itself, but the administration of anesthesia. The president’s corpulence aside, there was the age factor—he was fifty-six—and physically drained. The team was seriously concerned that Cleveland might suffer a heart attack and die on the operating table.
Throughout the morning, with the yacht proceeding up the East River at half speed, Cleveland’s mouth was repeatedly cleansed and disinfected. As the Oneida sailed past Bellevue Hospital on 26th Street, all the physicians abruptly went below deck lest their colleagues at Bellevue, who might be gazing out at the passing vessel, recognize them and suspect that something was up.
With the yacht continuing its progress up river, the operation commenced. Imagine the steady hands of the physicians involved. No one wanted to think about the consequences if something terrible happened. All their reputations were on the line. “If you hit a rock, hit it good and hard,” Dr. Bryant informed the ship’s captain. That way, at least, “we’ll all go to the bottom.” It was dark humor at its most macabre.
The cabin had been cleared of furnishings except for the organ, which was fastened down. Cleveland was placed on a chair that was propped up against the mast. A dose of nitrous oxide put the president under, and Hasbrouck, the dentist, went at it, extracting the two left upper bicuspids. They were having trouble rendering the president fully unconscious and an additional dose of ether was ordered. Ether was more potent than nitrous oxide but also riskier. The problem with ether was that while it knocked a patient out, sometimes the patient never woke up. They monitored Cleveland’s vital signs as an incision was made and the entire left upper jaw was excised with a cheek retractor, a “most useful” instrument that Keen had discovered while attending a medical convention in Paris in 1866. The physicians peered into the exposed hollow cavity of the upper jaw and found that it was filled with a gelatinous mass, evidently a sarcoma. A small section of the soft palate was also removed. Thank goodness