Healing Richard Nixon: A Doctor's Memoir

256 Pages·2003·11.522 MB·English

by  John C. Lungren

Healing Richard Nixon
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
August 1, 1974
Dear Jack:
It is typical of you to always do the right
thing at the right time, and I deeply appre-
ciate your thoughtful telegram of July 26.
Your words of friendship and concern mean
more than I can say, and they are a source
of strength and encoviragement for me at
this difficult time.
Pat joins me in sending our warmest good
wishes to Lorain and you.
Sincerely,
Dr. John C. Lungren
4180 Chestnut Avenue
Long Beach, California
HEALING
RICHARD
NIXON
A DOCTOR'S MEMOIR
John C. Lungren, M.D.
and John C. Lungren Jr.
With a Foreword by Rick Perlstein
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY
Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant
from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Copyright © 2003 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of
Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society,
Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State
University, Morehead State University, Murray State University,
Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of
Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.
Editorial and Saks Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
07 06 05 04 03 5 4 3 2 1
Frontispiece: A letter to the author, sent by President Nixon just days
before his resignation.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lungren,John C, 1916-2000.
Healing Richard Nixon : a doctor's memoir /John C. Lungren and
John C. Lungren, Jr.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8131-2274-0 (Cloth : alk. paper)
1. Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913—Health. 2. Nixon,
Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913-3. Presidents—United
States—Biography. 4. Lungren, John C, 1916-2000. 5. Nixon,
Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913—Friends and associates. 6.
Physicians—United States—Biography. I. Lungren, John C. II. Title.
E856.L86 2003
973.924'092—dc21 2003005312
Members of the Association of
American University Presses
Dedication of John C. Lungren, M.D.
For My Loving Wife
Lorain Kathleen Lungren.
In Memory of
Jack Drown
Helene Drown.
Dedication of John C. Lungren Jr.
For My Wife, Mentor, and Inspiration
Nancy Jean Lungren.

Contents
Foreword
ix
Prefaces by John C. Lungren Jr.
and John C. Lungren, M.D.
xvii
Acknowledgments
xxv
1. The Cease of Majesty
1
2. From Pharaohs to Phlebitis
9
3. Dread Unconcealed
21
4. The Plot Thickens
29
5. On the Campaign Trail I
41
6. On the Campaign Trail II
61
7. The Haldeman Enigma
75
8. Defeating Death
83
9. Judge Sirica's Medical Panel
93
10. Nixon, Sinatra, Dreyfus
113
11. Habeas Corpus:
Nixon on Watergate and Vietnam
119
12. Nixon and the Jews
127
13. Nixon and Kissinger
131
14. Regimen for Recovery
137
15. Dreadful Summoners
145
16. Nixon in China
151
17. Pat Nixon and The Final Days
159
18. New Glory
167
Appendix
183
Notes
191
Bibliography
197
Index
203
Photos follow page 100
Foreword
Rick Perlstein
DR. JOHN C. LUNGREN BEGINS HIS BOOK with an epi-
graph from his subject. "But I have found that leaders are
subject to all the human frailties," Richard Nixon wrote in
his 1962 book Six Crises. It is a good choice, for the sen-
tence suggests that Nixon once believed, remarkably, that
somehow he could render himself invulnerable and that,
well into his adulthood, he had to learn to live with the fact
that he could not.
This quote also helps explain why Dr. John C.
Lungren—not a biographer, not a historian, not a profes-
sional writer, certainly not an unbiased observer—is impor-
tant for understanding Richard Nixon. This issue of
vulnerability—repressing it, belatedly acknowledging it,
fighting it, hiding it, probing it, exploiting it in others, and
even, in strategic moments, exploiting it in himself—was
central to Richard Nixon's life. As Richard Nixon's personal
physician, John Lungren was on the campaign trails of the
1950s and 1960s, and he was with him after his resignation
during the crisis of August 1974. Lungren was the one with
the best access to Richard Nixon at those moments of exis-
tential crisis and physical vulnerability. It was Lungren who
Foreword
saw Nixon "alabaster white, incoherent, and slipping into
unconsciousness" and who saw him being slapped back into
consciousness by a nurse crying "Richard! Richard!"—the
name no one but his dead mother had called him. Through
him we see Nixon conveying information about his physi-
cal condition in humiliated whispers. There were no doubts
at these moments about the great leader's equal vulner-
ability to human frailty. "Even the President of the United
States," Bob Dylan sang, "sometimes must have to stand
naked."
John C. Lungren was a California physician trained at
the University of Notre Dame and the University of Penn-
sylvania, comfortably settled as a specialist in internal medi-
cine and based at the Memorial Medical Center in Long
Beach when he met Richard Nixon on his 1952 campaign
train. He was soon asked to share duties as campaign physi-
cian. The two men were, in many ways, of a piece, which is
to say, of a generation. They were men who had joined the
effort to defeat Hitler and Tojo when already well into their
professional practices in law and medicine. They returned
after the war to a nation, America, and a region, southern
California, where they were poised to inherit the world.
Richard Nixon's ability to both embody and appeal to the
new, ambitious leaders, in their Republican incarnation at
least, defined much of the appeal that brought him to Con-
gress as a representative of Orange County in 1946. In paint-
ing this portrait of the fall and recovery of a complex Nixon,
Lungren has also provided a valuable self-portrait of a quint-
essential Nixon Man, a species that would, to the great con-
sternation of liberals, come to define so much of American
society by the last quarter of the twentieth century: conser-
vatives, in a word.
It is instructive to hop back on the campaign train with