Washington [402]
The president summoned Dr. Samuel Bard, a prominent New York physician, who diagnosed the condition as the cutaneous form of anthrax. Petrified that Washington would expire, Bard refused to leave his bedside for several days. The situation must have shocked everyone around Washington: no sooner had the federal government been formed than its president lay in mortal peril. In all likelihood, Washington had a carbuncle or soft tissue infection. As might be expected, he was the picture of stoic courage. “I am not afraid to die and therefore can bear the worst,” he told Bard evenly. “Whether tonight, or twenty years hence, makes no difference. I know that I am in the hands of a good Providence.”2 The public knew something was wrong, if only because Tobias Lear had servants cordon off Cherry Street, stopping traffic. The household staff also sprinkled straw outside the mansion to deaden passing footsteps. Still, the public had no notion of the gravity of the president’s illness.
On June 17, when Dr. Bard operated on Washington’s thigh, he brought along his father, Dr. John Bard, to supervise the proceedings. The elder Bard, a veteran surgeon, felt too old to undertake the procedure himself. Surgery was then a hellish ordeal, as the patient gritted his teeth and endured excruciating pain. While the younger Dr. Bard split open the abscess, his father exhorted him to persevere: “Cut away—deeper—deeper still! Don’t be afraid. You see how well he bears it!”3 Tobias Lear claimed that the tumor was “very large and the incision on opening it deep.”4 In all likelihood, the younger Bard excised the mass of infected tissue and scraped away any pus or dead tissue, all of which would have been enormously painful for Washington, who remained unfailingly courteous. As Samuel Bard assured his daughter, “It will give you pleasure to be told that nothing can exceed the kindness and attention I receive from him.”5
For weeks afterward, as Washington lay bedridden, some friends thought he might never recover his legendary strength. “I have now the pleasure to inform you that my health is restored,” Washington apprised James McHenry on July 3, “but a feebleness still hangs upon me, and I am yet much incommoded by the incision which was made in a very large and painful tumor on the protuberance of my thigh.”6 In extreme discomfort, unable to walk or sit, he reclined on his right side for six weeks and couldn’t even draft a letter. When Abigail Adams visited, she found him, with becoming presidential dignity, stretched out on the sofa and praised this “singular example of modesty and diffidence.”7
The interior of Washington’s coach was reconfigured so he could lie down, although he had to be lifted and deposited gently inside by four servants. For an hour each day, he made salutary tours of the town with Martha. On July 4, 1789, Baron von Steuben and Alexander Hamilton—now, respectively, president and vice president of the New York Society of the Cincinnati—trooped to 3 Cherry Street to pay their respects before Hamilton delivered a eulogy to Nathanael Greene at St. Paul’s Chapel. In a moving homage to Greene’s memory, Washington, despite his discomfort, dressed up in full regimentals to greet his visitors at the door—an unusual instance of Washington donning a military costume during his presidency. To the limited extent possible, he kept up appearances and tried to convey an aura of calm.
By early September, Washington reassured Dr. James Craik that the inflammation had dwindled to “the size of a barleycorn” and that he expected it would shortly disappear altogether.8