As President Donald Trump was whisked to Walter Reed Military Medical Center after testing positive for the coronavirus, he could take solace that he was not alone. More than a century ago, another U.S. president was affected by a pandemic.
On Friday, Trump announced that he and first lady Melania Trump had tested positive for COVID-19, the deadliest outbreak since the 1918 flu. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson was affected by the illness, sometimes referred to as Spanish flu. More than 675,000 Americans died from the contagious disease.
In 1918, Wilson’s personal secretary became ill with influenza, along with his eldest daughter, The Washington Post reported. Secret Service members also caught the virus, and so did sheep grazing on the White House lawn, the newspaper reported.
Ill with the Spanish Flu, Woodrow Wilson at end WWI “yielded to several French demands that he had previously said were nonnegotiable”...to get to bed! @washingtonpost was prescient last March. Woodrow Wilson got the 1918 flu. Now Trump has coronavirus. https://t.co/NhgyxGu7r3
— Heidi Legg (@heidilegg) October 3, 2020
Wilson was in France for the Paris Peace Conference when he fell ill on April 3, 1919. According to author A. Scott Berg’s 2013 biography, “Wilson,” wrote that the president excused himself from a meeting with the Council of Four and “staggered to his room."
Wilson’s doctor, Cary T. Grayson, found the president suffering from severe pains in his back and head, severe coughing spells and a temperature of 103 degrees, Berg wrote.
Wilson’s condition deteriorated so quickly that Grayson thought the president had been poisoned, the Post reported.
In a hand-delivered letter to Wilson’s chief of staff in Washington, Grayson wrote that the night Wilson became ill “was one of the worst through which I have ever passed," according to the Post. "I was able to control the spasms of coughing but his condition looked very serious.”
Grayson did not publicize the severity of Wilson’s illness, telling reporters that the president was suffering from a cold caused by the “chilly and rainy weather” in Paris.
Wilson remained lethargic for weeks, but displayed a “contradictory impulse" to continue “without a care in the world,” Berg wrote.
The peace talks continued in Paris, with Wilson sending proxies to meetings before he could return for face-to-face negotiations, the Post reported.
Wilson had a full recovery, but then suffered a collapse on Sept. 25, 1919, in Pueblo, Colorado, part of a nationwide speaking tour as he stumped the country attempting to push his idea of the United States joining the League of Nations. Wilson returned to the White House, where he suffered his most serious stroke on Oct. 2, 1919.
That major stroke hampered -- albeit secretly -- the latter stages of Wilson’s term. Wilson’s wife, Edith Wilson, helped steer the government for 17 months until Warren G. Harding took office in March 1921.
Cox Media Group
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