Medicine: Did Roosevelt Have Cancer?

Surgeon points to clues about F.D.R.'s last years

Little strokes, a heart attack, cancer. Rumors of these illnesses—and worries about how they would affect his fitness for office—hovered around Franklin Delano Roosevelt as early as 1936. By 1944, when he was 62 and running for an unprecedented fourth term as President, the rumors had become persistent. Vice Admiral Ross McIntire, Roosevelt's personal physician, insisted during the campaign that the President was in "excellent condition for a man of his age." But on April 12, 1945, less than three months after his fourth Inauguration,...