Maxillary Prosthetics, Speech Impairment, and Presidential Politics: How Grover Cleveland Was Able to Speak Normally after His "Secret" Operation

Abstract

In the summer of 1893, President Grover Cleveland discovered a mass on the roof of his mouth. Two physicians examined it, determined that it was a neoplasm, and recommended resection. In an effort to avoid revealing the illness to the public, the President and his doctors boarded a yacht on July 1 1893, where the surgeons resected the affected portion of his maxilla and several teeth under an ether anesthetic. Afterward, Kasson C. Gibson, a New York dentist, created a rubber obturator, which was placed in the surgical defect in the maxilla and restored the President's facial contour and speech. Due to the precise reconstruction with the rubber appliance crafted by Gibson, the President lived the rest of his public life without facial or speech abnormality. This article will review the details of the work of Kasson Gibson and the President's maxillary prosthesis.

Keywords: Grover Cleveland; Kasson Gibson; maxillary resection; oral surgery.

Fig. 1

A photograph of President Cleveland in 1888 from the Library of Congress http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3f06237/ .

Fig. 2

A photograph of President Cleveland in 1904 from the National Portrait Gallery Smithsonian Institute. https://www.si.edu/sisearch?edan_q=grover%2Bcleveland .

Fig. 3

On the left is the cast of the original maxillary defect (1893) and the outline of the size of the obturator that Dr. Gibson crafted. The picture on the right shows a cast of the president's palate from 1897, showing that the defect had contracted over time. Photographs used with permission of the New York Academy of Medicine Archive.

Fig. 4

A picture of Kasson Church Gibson (date unknown), courtesy of the New York Academy of Medicine.

Fig. 5

A photograph of Norman William Kingsley, the first Dean of the New York College of Dentistry, ca. 1900. https://doi.org/10.6083/M4VX0F25 .