University of Kentucky UKnowledge History in General History 2014 Ailing, Aging, Addicted: Studies of Compromised Leadership Bert E. Park Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Park, Bert E., "Ailing, Aging, Addicted: Studies of Compromised Leadership" (2014). History in General. 4. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_history_in_general/4 Ailing, Aging, Addicted This page intentionally left blank Ailing, Aging, Addicted STUDIES OF COMPROMISED LEADERSHIP Bert E. Park, M.D. With a Foreword by Arthur S. Link THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright © 1993 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Park, Bert Edward. Ailing, aging, addicted : studies of compromised leadership / Bert E. Park. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8131-5628-6 1. Heads of state-Health and hygiene. 2. Diseases and history. 3. Nervous system-Diseases. 4. Biohistory. I. Title. 0226.7.P37 1993 909-dc20 93-19550 For ARTHUR S. LINK Mentor, friend, and scholar without peer This page intentionally left blank Contents Foreword ARTHUR S. LINK ix Preface xiii Introduction: On Prudence and Skepticism 1 Part I. Sick Heads and Tall Tales 9 1. Napoleon Bonaparte: Heads or Tails? 11 2. Henry VIII: Syphilitic Sovereign? 27 3. Fanatics and Saints: The Case for Epilepsy 47 Part II. Brain Failure at the Top: Psychology or Pathology? 73 4. Josef Stalin: A Premier Paranoic 75 5. Woodrow Wilson: Paralyzed Prophet" 95 6. Winston Churchill: Compromised Cold Warrior 118 Part III. Drugs and Diplomacy 143 7. Anthony Eden: Metamorphosis of a Statesman 145 8. John F. Kennedy: Doctoring the Image 168 Part IV. The Crippled Presidency 187 9. Precedents and Pitfalls 189 10. Resuscitating the Twenty-fifth Amendment 205 Postscript-or Apologia.? 229 Notes 232 Index 264 This page intentionally left blank Foreword Bert Park's new book is of singular interest and importance because it deals with the age-old problem of the impact of disease upon history, particularly upon some of the people who played a large part in mak­ ing it. Nothing startles so much as the obvious. One obvious fact is that history is biography writ large. Another obvious fact is that history has been changed, for better or worse, by a handful of people. The unknown billions have passed through the stream of history known only to God. They have been the sinews of the human race. Leaderless, they have been an inert mass. It is not fashionable to say such things these days; we historians are supposed to be interested in writing "from the bottom up, 11 about the so-called common people. The difficulty is that we know virtually nothing about most of them except as aggregates. And, to repeat, history has been changed by a few individuals about whom we know a great deal. Another obvious fact is that the lives of all people have been, in a determinative way, affected by good health or illness and disease. Most historians would say that this is a truism, and yet most of them are eitherstartled orincredulous when confronted with the corollary of this trusim: disease often changes the course of history when it affects detrimentally history's shakers and movers. From one angle I am not being altogether fair to historians, who have long been aware of the gross effect of disease upon macrohistory­ for example, the depopulation of the Italian peninsula during the latter days of the Roman Empire, the Black Death of the 1340s, or the influ­ enza pandemic of 1918. More recently, historians have discovered the devastating effects of diseases new to the peoples of the Americas after their contact with the Europeans in the sixteenth century. This resulted in the greatest demographic disaster in recorded history. It is biog­ raphers who have the most trouble in dealing with notable subjects whose behavior has been profoundly affected by disease. Often biog­ raphers simply pass the matter by. For example, one can read Ray Stannard Baker's multivolume biography of Woodrow Wilson without knowing that Wilson suffered during most of his adult life from hyper- x FOREWORD tension and cerebrovascular disease. Actually, Baker knew this fact and may have thought it bad taste to discuss this aspect of Wilson's biogra­ phy. But for most biographers, the medical histories of their subjects simply seem bodies of knowledge too esoteric and unknown for them to deal with; they are historians and biographers, not medical specialists. Dr. Park has some very wise things to say to them on this subject. I first came to know Dr. Park in 1985, when he sent me a copy of the page proofs of his first book, The Impact of Illness on World Leaders (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), which contained a chapter on Woodrow Wilson. This was a time when, as editor of The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, I was approaching that period in Wilson's life when cerebrovascular disease, which culminatedin a massive stroke on Octo­ ber 2, 1919, was beginning to have an unambiguous impact on Wilson's behavior. I invited Dr. Park to become a member of the Editorial Advi­ sory Committee of The Papers ofWoodrow Wilson. He accepted and was a wise counselor and guide through the labyrinths of Wilson's illnesses from 1918 to 1920. In addition, he contributed editorial notes to The Papers onWilson during the Paris Peace Conference and the controversy in the United States over ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, thefirst article of which was the Covenant of the League of Nations. Dr. Park has all the training and skills that every biographer would like to possess. To begin with, he is well-trained in history and histor­ ical methodology and, with his incredible energy, finds time to teach courses in that subject. Trained medically first in pathology, he has an astounding knowledge of disease in general. He then shifted to neurol­ ogy, neuropsychiatry, and neurosurgery. I have never known anyone who is more avid or more honest in searching for the truth of the matter at hand. He is the first to say that he has made a mistake and to try to correct it. He knows the limits of medical historical knowledge and is skeptical when skepticism is in order, as it usually is. And his bete noir is medical reductionism, that is, saying that illness accounts for all deviant or uncharacteristic behavior. All these talents and devotion to the search for truth shine forth in the book for which these words are a foreword. The three chapters in Part I on Napoleon, Henry VIII, and temporal lobe epilepsy as it affected (or did not affect) Hitler, Joan of Arc, St. Paul, and John Brown (of Harper's Ferry) show what a pathologist and neu­ rologist can do in the absence of medical records (except for the report of Napoleon's autopsy). Medical records aside, we do have an enormous body of evidence (the observations of contemporaries, the writings and sayings of these subjects, and above all their behavior) on the subjects of this chapter. Dr. Park's conclusions are cautious, sometimes tentative, but I find most of them convincing. He is now not so sure as he was in Foreword xi The Impact ofIllness that Hitler was afflicted with TLE. It seems to me that he has discovered the disease, schistosomiasis, contractedin Egypt, that did Napoleon in over the long run, although arsenic poisoning may have hastened his death; that he has proved that Henry was not a syphilitic; and that John Brown had a classic case of TLE. As for St. Paul, it is hard for Dr. Park to believe that he suffered from the seizures and hallucinations of TLE: "As intriguing as the evidence for TLE is from my perspective as a neurosurgeon, it is difficult for me as a Christian to believe that so many theologians who have studied Paul couldbe wrong. Yet nothing clouds rational thinking as much as deeply held convic­ tions born of faith. The question remains whether in regard to Paul we have allowed that to happen." The three chapters in Part lIon Stalin, Wilson, and Churchill attack the central questions of the biographies of these twentieth-century leaders: whether their careers were affected by disease or psychological deficits. About these individuals we have enough medical evidence to enable Dr. Park to write with a sure hand, when he argues that each suffered from an identical underlying disease that accentuated their psychological deficits. The evidence on Stalin is now voluminous and is becoming more so every day of glasnost; he was, as Park says, a "premier paranoic," the victim of one of the worst diseases that can affect a functioning person. In Stalin's case, it turned him into the incarnation of evil. The chapter on Wilson ought, it seems to me, to settle the question of w~ether neurological disease and stroke or psychological defects caused the collapse of Wilson's leadership during the treaty fight.