White House Doctor
by By Smith, T. Burton, M.D.
Category: Biography & Autobiography , Presidents & Heads of State

Only a handful of doctors have been responsible for the health and well-being of presidents of the United States. This is the highly personalized story of T. Burton Smith, M.D., White House doctor to President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush during two of the most eventful years in recent U.S. history.Dr. Smith was with President Reagan during his meetings with world leaders from Mitterand and Kohl to Gorbachev and Hirohito. He was rarely more than a few minutes away from the president and First Lady in the White House, Camp David, aboard Air Force One, or at their 688-acre ranch in California. He was in charge of the physical examination that discovered a "white glistening polyp the size of a golf ball" in President Reagan's colon - a growth which could have cost America's 40th president his life.The practice of medicine has changed beyond recognition during the past 350 years. Dr. Smith examines it from Washington's day, when a popular remedy was deer antler shavings, to the present with emphasis given to the four presidents who were assassinated - Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy. He argues that even with today's medical advances Lincoln and Kennedy would have died, but that Garfield and McKinley would have been back to work in the White House only a few weeks after they were shot.Dr. Smith also describes the incredible care surrounding the two most recent occupants of the White House - Ronald Reagan and George Bush. He explains how six pints of refrigerated blood accompanied President Reagan on every trip he took. How the president wore a bulletproof raincoat to a ceremony overseas at which the Secret Service thought he might be shot. How food served to the president is purchased by plainclothes security men driving unmarked cars who never shop at the sane store twice in a row. And how he gave Ronald Reagan and George Bush direct orders that he expected them to obey, which they did!While Dr. Smith's book reveals the panorama of care surrounding the well-being of the men who have occupied the White House and their immediate families, it's also filled with fascinating minutiae. What, for example, do you give the president and First Lady for Christmas (and what do they give you)? How powerful was Nancy Reagan's astrologer? What caused her to summon Dr. Smith to her White House quarters to tell him "You don't talk!"? And where is the only place in the world that the president of the United States can go for a walk all by himself?Never before has a White House doctor described in such intimate detail what it's like to look after the most powerful man on earth. This book fills that void.