A Presidential Secret: An Operation to Save The Nation

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The cause of the panic had been a run on banks after Congress passed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1890.The legislation enabled investors with paper or silver assets to exchange them for gold. Mistakenly, people feared that the act would empty the U.S. Treasury and leave the government with insufficient reserves of gold to back up its currency or pay its debts.

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President Cleveland believed that the only road to economic recovery lay in repealing the act. But even his own Democratic Party was deeply split on the issue. The vice president, Adlai Stevenson (grandfather of the U.S. presidential candidate in 1952 and again in 1956), was a stubborn opponent of repeal – as were many other influential members of the party. The president knew that unless he remained available to lend active support, the reform program in which he so deeply believed had little chance of being implemented, and the United States might be plunged into further chaos.

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That is why it was crucial that Cleveland’s ill health and any possible absence from Washington be kept a closely guarded secret.

A Matter of Urgency

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Surgeons had found a malignant cancerous growth in Cleveland’s upper jawbone on June 18 and recommended immediate treatment. Any wait for the operation during what could be a long-drawn-our political battle over repeal might well prove fatal. So on June 30, 1893 – the very day that Cleveland announced a special session of Congress to meet on August 7 to discuss repeal – the president disappeared from public view and that evening secretly boarded the yacht.

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A team of doctors and surgeons welcomed him on board. Among them were a well-known surgeon and a friend of the president’s, Dr. Joseph D. Bryant, and a dentist, Dr. Ferdinand Hasbrouck.

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Hasbrouck administered an anesthetic to the president and removed several of his teeth. The surgeons then went to work, and one of them, Dr. W.W. Keen, used a “cheek retractor” an instrument that enabled him to operate inside the president’s mouth while leaving no external scar. Cleveland’s upper jawbone was then removed.

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The operation was a brilliant success in every respect but one: it left the president without the power of coherent speech. As a remedy, a vulcanized rubber jaw was designed and fitted in his mouth. He was then able to speak without impediment. On August 5 the newly invigorated president was back at his desk in Washington ready for the new session of Congress. The reforms were soon approved and the economy restored.

The Real Story

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In 1917, long after Cleveland and many of those involved in the affair had died, Dr. Keen published his account of what happened. It vindicated the Philadelphia Press report by Edwards, who for 24 years had suffered public abuse as a “calamity liar,” and substantiated the story for the first time. It had to be a secret, wrote Dr. Keen, for on its successful conclusion “hung not only the life of a human being and an illustrious ruler, but the density of the nation.