Opinion | Scandal and the Heat Did Zachary Taylor In (original) (raw)
Opinion|Scandal and the Heat Did Zachary Taylor In
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/04/opinion/l-scandal-and-the-heat-did-zachary-taylor-in-998691.html
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July 4, 1991
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To the Editor:
President Zachary Taylor did not die of natural causes as you report June 27. As Samuel Eliot Morison puts it in his "Oxford History of the American People," he died of a "combination of official scandals, Washington heat and doctors."
After learning of a scandal in which his Secretary of War made a fortune, "Old Rough and Ready" was in a depressed state on the Fourth of July 1850, when he was subjected to two hours of oratory in the hot Washington sun. He attempted to cool off by consuming huge amounts of cucumbers and iced milk. In the unhealthy climate of Washington, with its open sewers and flies, Taylor came down with cholera morbus, or acute gastroenteritis as it is now called.
Morison believed that Taylor "would probably have recovered if left alone." Fat chance for a President. The capital physician, assisted by a Baltimore quack, performed what some might consider an assassination. As Morison writes, they "drugged him with ipecac, calomel, opium and quinine (at 40 grains a whack), and bled and blistered him too. On July 9 he gave up the ghost." Who wouldn't? JIM SAMPAS New York, June 27, 1991
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