Ill-advised: Presidential Health and Public Trust.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Brief Article

Ill-Advised: Presidential Health and Public Trust. Robert H. Ferrell. University of Missouri, $19.95. This book couldn't be timelier considering the nagging concerns about George Bush's health--see Who's Who--and the revelation that even the righteous Paul Tsongas had an undisclosed recurrence scare after he had said his cancer had disappeared. And the story Ferrell tells is not reassuring. Both presidents and their doctors seem to have a gift for deceiving either themselves-as FDR and Dr. Ross T. Mclntyre did--or the public--as John Kennedy and his physicians did. While Wilson, Cleveland, Harding, and Reagan (or their physicians) emerge as deceivers, the...