A Week in Bed

Last week, for the third time since he entered the White House eight years ago, illness kept Franklin Roosevelt away from his desk for seven days. Top boss of the White House was Rear Admiral Ross T. Mclntire, Surgeon General of the Navy who kept the President of the U.S. in bed most of the week.

The news of the President's illness was made public on Tuesday when his regular press conference was canceled. Presidential Secretary Stephen Early announced that he went to bed that afternoon with a "gastro-intestinal disorder" and a degree and a half of fever.

Actually the President during the previous week had looked as bad as a man can look and still be about. When he visited Staunton, Va., to dedicate Woodrow Wilson's restored birthplace (TIME, May 12), he managed to get through his brief address but accompanying pleasantries--lunches and visits--were canceled and he went immediately back to Washington.

According to Washington rumor he was suffering from diarrhea; his condition was not so much serious as fretful. But his Friday press conference was also canceled.

At week's end, although it was officially announced that his temperature was back to normal, he remained in bed and put off receiving Australian Prime Minister Menzies (see p. 16} as well as a group of high-ranking Latin-American naval chiefs who are visiting the U.S. by invitation. By that time his illness appeared to be under control.

The most thrilling account of it appeared in Italy. All Rome papers announced that he was seriously ill, that doctors had been summoned to the White House, that the entire nation was disturbed. Finally the Italian papers had the President confined to a casa di salute--roughly, a place where people go to get over a nervous breakdown.

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