Category: Science

I was not aware of how severe Wilson’s disabilities were:

If Woodrow Wilson’s brain had suffered no further damage, the history of the following decades could have been very different. For Wilson in 1916 wanted Germany defeated but not crushed; he wanted Germany to be a viable member of the proposed League of Nations. He was convinced that a dictated peace [“… ]would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and that would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which the terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand.” The overthrow of the Kaiser in 1918 and his replacement by a democratic government raised Wilson’s hopes for rehabilitating Germany. At the 1919 peace conference in Paris, he argued against French efforts to try the ex-Kaiser and to exact punitive reparations.

But then President Wilson suddenly took ill during the conference: he had vomiting, high fever, and the other signs of having caught the influenza which was sweeping Europe and later much of the world. It turned out that the virus had affected his respiratory system, heart, brain, and prostate. Indeed, judging from some of the mental symptoms (his top aide noted that, just overnight, Wilson’s personality changed), Wilson may have suffered another stroke at this time or, as Dr. Weinstein suggests, have also caught the frequently associated virus of encephalitis lethargica (this is the virus whose victims often developed Parkinson’s disease years later, Oliver Sacks wrote about them in Awakenings).

Even before the influenza attack, his obsession with secrecy was pronounced: none of the other American peace commissioners were privy to President Wilson’s thinking. Bedridden, Wilson became obsessed with being overheard, with guarding his papers. In addition to the paranoia, he became euphoric and almost manic at times following the bedridden phase of the illness. He even became socially outgoing in ways quite uncharacteristic of the normally reticent Wilson.

But most striking was Wilson’s change in attitude toward the Germans: now he himself proposed that the former Emperor be tried. Whereas he had previously insisted that the German delegates be granted full diplomatic privileges at the conference, now he was contemptuous of them. Herbert Hoover, who was there, noted the change in Wilson’s behavior: before the influenza, Wilson was willing to listen to advice, was incisive, quick to grasp essentials and unhesitating in his conclusions. Afterward, he had lapses in memory, he groped for ideas, he was obsessed with “precedents.”

(Via Classical Values.)