The Strange Case of William Henry Harrison

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

We've all heard the story that WHR gave a 105-minute inaugural speech, in the cold, and as a result caught a cold which developed into pneumonia.

Is that still the accepted story?

You don't catch a cold from being cold, and I would think it's pretty rare that a cold causes pneumonia.

(I say "causes pneumonia" because I'm under the impression that pneumonia is not specifically a disease, but a fluid build-up that might me caused by any number of reasons.)

(And I don't think the CIA, Mafia, Right Wing, Military-Industrial Complex, or the Cubans were behind it--I just wonder if the medical community might have reevaluated it in the intervening 150-odd years.)

[dougie_monty]

Harrison was 68 years old when he was inaugurated, and he didn't wear a coat as he droned on and on for two hours. And he had been a medical student! At his age, in 1841, he would be quite susceptible to pneumonia, which at that time was one of the ten deadliest diseases in the United States.

[RTA]

My nearest source (which is from that period) claims he got a "severe cold" which "grew worse, and he was attacked with a severe chill, followed by a fever. This again was followed by a bilious pleurisy," whatever that is, "which, on the fourth of April, terminated his life."
He was President for exactly one month, and was sick every day of it.

[NanoByte]

You don't catch a cold from being cold,. . .

I see MDs and the sort making such silly statements from time to time.

Do you find yourself in an auto accident because the other car sought to be a Point X. . .or you sought to be there with your car?

I don't think anyone denies viruses are needed for a cold to start, but viruses are around all the time (outside of maybe Antarctica), and colds only start once in awhile -- when something lowers your immunological resistance to them. One such something is a decrease in ambient temperature. So, what is the cause in such case, and what is the enabling condition? There's no difference. MDs are just not very bright people. . .so what's the excuse of the rest of us?

Ray (Bullets don't kill people; it's those darn people putting themselves in front of bullets that do the job.)

[GuanoLad]

Who's William Henry Harrison?



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"So what you are telling me, Percy, is that something you have never seen is slightly less blue than something else that you have never seen."

[Nickrz]

William Henry Harrison was the ninth President of these United States.

From Merriam Webster:

Main Entry: pneu·mo·nia
Pronunciation: nu-'mO-ny&, nyu-
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, from Greek, from pneumOn lung, alteration of pleumOn -- more at PULMONARY
Date: 1603
: a disease of the lungs characterized by inflammation and consolidation followed by resolution and caused by infection or irritants