By Chris King

I visited the Mutter Museum, a medical museum in Philly, to see the tumor that was cut secretly from the jaw of Grover Cleveland (my dead prez), and was surprised to find it part of an exhibit called "When the President is the Patient." So I learned interesting bits about the sicknesses and deaths of some other presidents, too, and I'm gonna tell you about it.

General George
The national patriarch, with all the health complaints of a war veteran, nearly died in office more than once. First of a malicious carbuncle, and then of pneumonia, from which he was spared by Dr. John Jones, author of America's first textbook on surgery (1775). When he finally did die, after being bled, blistered and purged in the name of cure, one of the deathbed physicians had the fanciful name of Elisha Cullen Dick.

Andrew Jackson
When Andy took office he was in such bad shape that someone described him as "a tottering scarecrow in deadly agony." He suffered from rotting teeth and internal bleeding caused by the two duel-inflicted bullets still lodged in his body.

William Henry Harrison
Billy Hank was picked by country punk rocker Bob Starker (of Killbuck, Ohio, by way of Columbus) because he died after only a month in office. Bob wants to write a short, furious punk song that lists things that last longer than Harrison's presidency did. I also learned that Bill was the oldest elected president (68) until Reagan (69), and that he died from pneumonia he may have contracted at his inauguration, which he attended without overcoat or top hat to look hardy, rather than old and frail, on a cold and rainy day.

Abraham Lincoln
I was bummed out to see a placard announcing "President Lincoln's Blood-Stained Collar" - with no collar in the exhibit case! But I did see an unspecified specimen of his killer, John Wilkes Booth, "currently believed" to be a chunk of his vertebrae. Floating in its jar it looked like a rag doll hugged too long and hard.

Garfield
As you might know from the rollicking folksong (best recorded by Bascom Lamar Lunsford), Gar was shot by Charles Guiteau. The museum has a chunk of Chuck G.'s (possibly syphilitic) brain, which looks like won tons gone horribly wrong. Apparently, Gar might have survived the blast from Guiteau's Engish bulldog .44 had his attending physicans not infected the wound by prodding it with their unclean fingers and instruments.

William McKinley
Billy Mac became the very emblem of this project when I learned that he was assassinated in the TEMPLE OF MUSIC (!) at the Pan America Expo in Buffalo in 1901. The bullet, plopped in him by Leon "Buy a Vowel" Czolgosz, was extracted by an off-duty gynecologist, his labors lit by sunlight reflected off a hand mirror.

Arthur, Harding, Eisenhower
All sick puppies when they took office (or sought re-election). Arty had Bright's disease, an incurable kidney disorder. Warren G.'s lips were blue from heart disease. Ike had innard trouble. A diagram of his troubled, ileitic intestines looked like a funky race track.

JFK
Look hard at pictures of Jack. He is often either gaunt (from Addison's disease) or puffy (from cortisone shots to combat it). Lying to the public about the illness fell to White House physician Dr. Janet G. Trarell, the first woman to hold the post. More grim trivia: The first official White House M.D. was Dr. Newton L. Bates, who died himself almost immediately after McKinley appointed him.

Grover Cleveland
My man Grover hopped on a private yacht in July of 1893 and sailed out of Long Island Sound (just miles from my house) to his summer home in Massachusetts. This was no joy ride. It was a covert hospital on the water. He had to get vorrucous carcinoma of the hard palate and gingiva (that's a malignant jaw tumor to you or me) cut out without anyone knowing. A financial crisis was at hand, and his Vice President Adilai Stevenson (bizarrely enough, the great great uncle of my songwriting partner, Elijah Shaw) favored an opposing solution to it. So Grover feared that his cancer, if known, would fuel his political enemies in a time of crisis. The truth was not made public until 20 years later. The work went fine, thanks to the then-newfangled cheek retractor, which I saw on display along with the laryngeal mirror that helped the doctors peer into Grover's mouth - and the tumor itself, which looked like the tops of chrysanthemums drifting atop tripe.

Woodrow Wilson
Woody collapsed in the summer of 1919 while stumping for the peace plan that he had brokered in the aftermath of WWI (without the proper politicking with Congress). He collapsed in Pueblo, Colo., and was a virtual shut-in and invalid for the rest of his term - that is, for two more years!