Today is election day in the United States and soon we will know who will be the next President. The lead up to this election has been more intense than previous campaigns and at times has become rather bitter and aggressive with both sides bringing up issues from the past. All sorts of things contribute to politics, but many of you may not be aware that in the 1970s, around the time of Watergate, venous thrombosis played its part in shaping politics of the day.
Nixon and Watergate
In July 1974 Richard Nixon was president and his world was falling apart around him. The supreme Court had ruled that the Watergate tapes should be released into the public domain. These clearly incriminated Nixon, confirming that he was aware of the break in at the Democratic Nation Congress offices in the Watergate complex. The tapes were made public on the 5th August 1974 and Nixon resigned three days later. Within a few weeks the Watergate indictments had been passed down and Nixon’s aides were to stand trial. Many of the accused wanted to subpoena the President to get him to admit that he ordered the cover up, and the presiding judge decided to compel the President to stand trial. But as history revealed, Nixon never went to court.
A pardon and pulmonary emboli
One month after he resigned two things happened on the same day. First, President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon for any crimes he might have committed and second Nixon developed the first signs of a DVT. Nixon had a history of thrombophlebitis, inflammation in the superficial veins, with the first episode in 1964 after an overseas trips. He had a second event early in 1974 just a few months before he resigned. At he time his doctor recommended he should take warfarin (coumadin) but he refused. On the day Nixon was pardoned he developed a painful swollen leg which progressed rapidly. He now agreed to warfarin treatment but his condition got worse and his wife Pat called their doctor who flew from Washington to California where Nixon was staying away from the limelight. By now Nixon had become breathless and had a documented pulmonary embolus. A venogram, an X ray of the leg veins using a dye, showed he had a massive clot up to the inferior venacava. His doctors decided to operate. In the 1970s doctors believed that the major vessels should be tied off to prevent pulmonary emboli in patients not responding to warfarin. It is unlikely we would do this operation today. The surgeons involved could not really agree whether to tie off the inferior venacava or the iliac vessel, the main vein draining blood from the leg. In the end they did the latter.
“If there’s no place in politics for human compassion, there’s something wrong with politics”
Following surgery Nixon had a very rocky course and was seriously unwell and took months to recover. On the 31st of October a more humane bit of politics took place. Gerald Ford was campaigning on the West Coast close to where Nixon was convalescing. He planned to visit Nixon, but his advisors suggested it was politically unwise to visit a discredited President during the build up to the next election. Ford responded that “If there’s no place in politics for human compassion, there’s something wrong with politics”, and visited him the next day.
Due to Nixon’s illness the Watergate Trial was postponed as everybody waited for the star witness. Nixon’s defence lawyers requested a delay of several months, but the judge was skeptical and wanted confirmation that the President was so unwell. A team of three famous doctors at the time were sent to examine the President and concluded that he was definitely not fit to appear at the Watergate trial. The doctors produced a report that had to be hand written as nobody had thought to send somebody with the doctors to record the events. Dr Spittel wrote the report as he had the best hand writing! The judge decided that the Watergate trial should go ahead without the President.
As a result of a DVT, Nixon would never give testimony about Watergate.
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