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By Root 1639 0

the cancer had not spread into the orbit of the eye socket, which meant that Cleveland’s left eye would remain in place, and the president would be spared any external disfigurement. The physicians worked at a fast pace, and the entire procedure lasted only thirty-one minutes. Cleveland hemorrhaged a mere six ounces of blood—just enough to fill a tumbler. The large cavity inside the president’s mouth was packed with gauze and cotton, and while he was still out, he was injected with a hypodermic needle of morphine to manage the pain. The patient was lifted onto a bed.

“What a sigh of intense relief, we surgeons breathed,” Keen said many years later as he recounted the experience. They all shared a toast of whiskey in celebration of a successful operation.

When Cleveland opened his eyes, he saw a physician standing over him who he did not recognize. It was Bryant’s assistant, Dr. John Erdmann, taking first turn on the watch. With his mouth packed with dressing, the ill-tempered president grumbled, “Who the hell are you?”

Erdmann identified himself. Cleveland asked where he came from.

“Chillicothe,” Erdmann answered, in Ohio.

“Oh, do you know Mr. Nigbe there?”

“Yes, he’s the druggist.”

A woozy Cleveland, his mind not really functioning, wondered whether the druggist was interested in a government job. When Erdmann assured Cleveland that the druggist was doing just fine, Cleveland snapped, “Then he won’t get one!”

Keen and the other doctors took turns sitting by the president’s bedside. To pass the time when he was awake, they read to him. The next day, Cleveland wobbled out of bed. By the third day, he was socializing with his old friend Commodore Benedict and Secretary Lamont. Dr. Hasbrouck was anxious to leave—he had another operation scheduled—and was dropped off at New London, Connecticut. Then the yacht crossed Long Island Sound bound for Sag Harbor, where Keen got off and made his way home to Philadelphia. The next day, the Oneida reached Buzzards Bay. Somehow, Cleveland found the strength to walk from the launch to his summer house, Gray Gables.

Newspaper reporters smelled something was up, but during an impromptu news conference held inside the barn at Gray Gables, Lamont deflected suspicions with out-and-out falsehoods and the usual scorn for anyone who questioned the official White House line. All he conceded was that the president had been stricken with a tooth infection and had to have two teeth pulled on his way to Buzzards Bay. But that was all. Specifically asked about a malignancy, Lamont snapped that it was a “preposterous” question.

For the next several days, Cleveland was kept out of sight while he recuperated. A New York orthodontist, Dr. Kasson Gibson, was brought in to fit the president with an artificial jaw made of vulcanized rubber. When the appliance was mounted into the hole inside his mouth, it had the effect of reinforcing the underpinning of Cleveland’s cheek and thus averted the appearance of a sunken jaw. Cleveland tried it out. His speech was labored, but no one would have suspected that much of his jawbone had been surgically removed. Later, when the rubber plate gave him some trouble, Cleveland was fitted with a more comfortable appliance.

Even the greatest healers can sometimes slip up. Cleveland was still recuperating at Gray Gables when Dr. Bryant found something disturbing. It was now evident that not all the diseased tissue had been cut out. Because the mouth had been bathed in blood during the operation, the surgeons had apparently overlooked a small mass of it. Word went out to the team of surgeons, and once again, everybody assembled on the Oneida for another round of clandestine surgery. Keen took the train to Greenwich, Connecticut, where Commodore Benedict lived. The Oneida was waiting for him at dockside and crossed the sound to Buzzards Bay. Cleveland boarded the yacht on July 17 and, just to be safe, a second operation was performed, and the suspicious tissue excised.

As the president convalesced, it was crucial that he attend to the national economic crisis. Cleveland