Washington [563]
Many librarians and archivists contributed to the creation of this book. At the Massachusetts Historical Society, Peter Drummey and Stephen T. Riley led me through relevant collections, and I was especially pleased to handle there Washington’s historic Newburgh address to his officers. At the Boston Athenaeum, Stanley Ellis Cushing and Mary Warnement provided guidance to a collection rich in nineteenth-century printed matter about Washington. Diane Windham Shaw at the Skillman Library at Lafayette College gave me a personal tour of an exhibition on the Marquis de Lafayette and helped with material about him. At the New York Public Library, Thomas Lannon offered direction to the Washington Irving materials. Bruce Kirby at the Library of Congress in Washington steered me through John Marshall’s papers related to his early Washington biography. Special thanks to John Overholt at the Houghton Library at Harvard University, where I examined firsthand George Washington’s personal copy of James Monroe’s A View of the Conduct of the Executive . . . , complete with his venomous marginal comments. At the Earl Gregg Swem Library at the College of William and Mary, Anne Johnson answered queries about special collections. Nelson D. Lankford, editor of the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, rushed into my hands a copy of the magazine’s excellent bicentennial issue on George Washington.
Washington’s medical and dental history offered an especially fertile field for investigation. I was delighted to encounter dentist Dr. John Tosi, who tutored me in the fine points of eighteenth-century dentistry and described the torments of Washington’s dentures. At the New York Academy of Medicine Library, Arlene Shaner gave me access to Washington’s dentures, shepherded me through esoteric dental journals, and showed me, encased in a glass locket, Washington’s last remaining tooth. My brother, Dr. Bart Chernow, and good friend Dr. Jerome Groopman answered numerous medical queries during the research.
Struck by recurrent mentions of Washington’s trembling hands, I decided to explore the possibility that he suffered from Parkinson’s disease, a disorder that was not named and identified until after his death. I consulted three renowned neurologists, supplied them with a comprehensive medical history of Washington, and asked them to diagnose his condition. While they agreed that Washington suffered from a movement disorder, there was no general agreement as to what it was. One expert opted for Parkinson’s disease, a second for essential tremor, and a third for enhanced physiological tremor. In the absence of a medical consensus, I omitted the issue from the text of the book, but I was vastly impressed by the informed opinions submitted by the three experts: Dr. Stanley Fahn, professor of neurology at the Columbia University Medical Center; Dr. Daniel Tarsy, professor of neurology at the Harvard Medical School; and Dr. Carlos Singer, professor of neurology at the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami. It turned out to be a fascinating, if inconclusive, exercise, and I am indebted to the neurologists in question for their generous cooperation.
Late in the writing of this book, I suffered a severe orthopedic injury that nearly derailed the project. For that