Whether you learned it in shoal , or through a jauntymusical numberonThe Simpsons , the distressing narration ofWilliam Henry Harrisonis one of the more singular in Americanhistory . Before being elected the ninth President of the United States in 1840 , Harrison was roll in the hay as a military sub who led his flock to victory against an attack from the aboriginal American confederacy in 1811 , later known as theBattle of Tippecanoe . His heroics strain into theWar of 1812 , when he recovered Detroit from the British and bring home the bacon the Battle of Thames .
Military notoriety has often given way to a road intopolitics , particularly in the 19th century . Harrison was soon elected a senator for Ohio , and then eventually became president after beat incumbent presidentMartin van Burenin 1840 . At 67 years older , Harrison ask office as the oldest president to ever be elected — a record that would suffer untilRonald Reagan ’s election in 1980 at 69 years old ( which has since been perplex by both Donald Trump and Joe Biden ) .
Despite the cold , rainy weather in Washington D.C. on startup day , Harrison stood in front of the masses without his overcoat , hat , and gloves , and gave an 8445 - word speech that would last almost two time of day . Three weeks after , Harrison kvetch of weariness and of a frigidness , which later turned into what doctors enunciate was pneumonia . On April 4 , 1841 — exactly one calendar month after take position — Harrison was bushed .
The historic narrative virtually save itself : Harrison , after being improperly dress for the weather , dumbfound pneumonia and would go down as a exemplary narrative ( or a punch business line ) and was known now for having the short presidentship on record . But was it really pneumonia that vote down him ? Harrison ’s own doctor , Thomas Miller , was unbelieving . He wrote :
“ The disease was not viewed as a face of double-dyed pneumonia ; but as this was the most palpable philia , the full term pneumonia open a summary and understandable answer to the innumerable doubtfulness as to the nature of the onslaught . ”
While revisit the guinea pig in 2014 , author Jane McHugh and Dr. Philip A. Mackowiak of the University of Maryland School of Medicine came up with a raw diagnosis after looking at the evidence through the lens of modern medical specialty : enteral fever , also known as typhoid febricity . They detail their determination in the journalClinical infective Diseases[PDF ] and forThe New York Times .
Before 1850 , Washington D.C. ’s sewage was ditch into a marsh just seven blocks upstream from the executive mansion ’s water supply . McHugh and Mackowiak hypothesized that Harrison was expose to bacterium — namelySalmonella typhiorS. paratyphi — which could make enteric feverishness . Harrison also apparently had a account of severe indigestion , which could have made him more susceptible to such enteric suffering . While treating Harrison , Miller also administered opium and enema , both of which would cause more impairment than honorable to someone in Harrison ’s precondition .
Harrison was not the only someone to be afflicted with a GI illness while occupying the administration in this time period . BothJames K. Polkand Zachary Taylor , concord to McHugh and Mackowiak , suffered through spartan stomach flu , and the duo theorizes it was the same enteral fever as Harrison ’s . Polk recovered , while Taylordied in officeof his illness , less than 10 years after Harrison ’s dying .
Though Harrison ’s insistence on soldier through his drawn-out , bitter insensate inauguration while dress in his ok bound wear was n’t a high stage in presidential common sentience , there ’s plenty of scientific grounds to suggest that it did n’t lend to the short presidency in American history .
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A rendering of this narrative run in 2018 ; it has been update for 2024 .
