illegal activities by his own cabinet which was apparently unknown to him. At the end of July, while traveling south from Alaska through British Columbia , he developed what was thought to be a severe case of food poisoning . He gave the final speech of his life to a large crowd at the University of Washington Stadium (now Husky Stadium ) at the University of Washington campus in Seattle, Washington . A scheduled speech in Portland, Oregon was canceled. The President's train proceeded south to San Francisco . Upon arriving at the Palace Hotel , he developed pneumonia . Harding died in his hotel room of either a heart attack or a stroke at 7:35 p.m. on August 2, 1923. The formal announcement, printed in the New York Times of that day, stated that "A stroke of apoplexy was the cause of death." He had been ill exactly one week. [ 57 ] Naval physicians surmised that he had suffered a heart attack . The Hardings' personal medical advisor, homeopath and Surgeon General Charles E. Sawyer , disagreed with the diagnosis. Mrs. Harding refused permission for an autopsy which soon led to speculation that the President had been the victim of a plot, possibly carried out by his wife, as Harding apparently had been unfaithful to the First Lady. Gaston B. Means , an amateur historian and gadfly , noted in his book The Strange Death of President Harding (1930) that the circumstances surrounding his death lent themselves to