Self-Physicker

Calvin Coolidge was that abomination of doctors--a self-physicker. For some days before his heart attack, said his Secretary Harry Ross last week, "he had been complaining of slight attacks of indigestion. He did not call his physician for these attacks, but treated himself with household remedies."

Coronary thrombosis, or clogging in one of the heart's own arteries.* in very many persons causes pains closely like the pains of acute indigestion. However, Calvin Coolidge could have had no suspicions of grave trouble. Only a short time before lis "indigestion" he, an insurance executive, had followed insurance men's and doctors' advice. He went through a periodic physical examination, showed no organic trouble. Coronary disease is that deceptive.

The death angered Calvin Coolidge's White House physician, square-cut Colonel James Francis Coupal. who last week cried as many a time before he had cried: "No nation in the world puts such a burden on its ruler as America does. ... It is a man-killing job." But he admitted: "He [President Coolidge] himself said that he was in better physical condition when he left the White House than when he entered it." Only six of the 29 past Presidents were younger than Calvin Coolidge's 60 years when they died, and three of the six died by assassination-- Lincoln, Garneld, McKinley. Average life span of the Presidents has been 68.7 years, average period after first assuming otiice 13.3 years.

President Coolidge was subject to seasickness which always threatened to mar the pleasure of steaming up & down the Potomac with the Mayflower. On these excursions Col. Coupal would watch the President's face attain a certain degree of pallor and wryness. would pluck two pledgets of cotton from a case and on them pour a few drops of a liquid. Mr. Coolidge would plug the medicated cotton in his ears. Soon his face would relax and ruddy Col. Coupal was free to continue with his jovial stories.

Last week he dazedly accompanied President Hoover to the funeral. Always a zealous pathologist, he pictured Coolidge in Death a great help to medicine and a good example to the nation, exclaimed: "I only hope an autopsy will be performed. If the family will permit it. they will be doing a great service in stimulating public demand for such post-mortem determination of the exact cause of death. It will do much to eliminate the existing, and foolish, American repugnance to autopsies."

Lincoln, Garneld and McKinley were autopsied. But Mrs. Coolidge wanted her husband interred intact.

*Presumably dead of coronary thrombosis: 'resident Harding. Of cerebral thrombosis: residents Roosevelt and Wilson.

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