Cesar de la Fuente-Nunez, Henry Skinner, Christina Yen
On June 30, 1924, Calvin Coolidge Jr. played a tennis match against his older brother John at the White House. It was hot and humid, and the sockless 16-year-old developed a small blister on the third toe of his right foot (Rhoads 2014). It soon became swollen and sore from an infection. His fever spiked, his lymph nodes swelled, and red streaks ran up his leg, a distressing sign that bacteria had wormed their way into his fascia and soon his blood stream. He entered Walter Reed Army Hospital on July 5, where his infection developed into sepsis, and he died two days later (Shapell 2017).
In the 1920s there wasn’t much the medical team could have done to save Calvin Jr. It didn’t matter if you were a pauper or the president’s son: When it came to bacterial infections, treatment options were limited, crude, and largely ineffective. Alexander Fleming had not yet discovered penicillin, and infections ran rampant in the pre-antibiotic era. Pneumonia was the leading cause of death with a mortality rate of 30 percent, common childhood illnesses like strep throat often turned fatal, and even seemingly minor injuries like a scratch from a rosebush or a blister could transmogrify into a bacterial nightmare, bringing Death’s scythe to one’s doorstep.
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