4. President Richard Nixon had a phobia of hospitals and feared that if he checked into one, he would never come out
Richard Nixon will forever be remembered as one of the most controversial Presidents in American history. He was the man behind the Watergate scandal that ended up with him stepping down from the top job in disgrace. The infamous episode was the direct result of Nixon’s tireless ambition to get to – and stay at – the top. Nothing would stand in his way, not even serious illness. However, when he was diagnosed with a serious blood clot following his resignation, Nixon was very reluctant to get it checked out, not just because it would take him away from the seat of power, but because he had a long-standing fear of hospitals.
Of course, lots of people, including world leaders, have a fear of doctors and hospitals. But only a relative few have real nosocomephobia, an excessive phobia of hospitals. Nixon almost certainly had it. Above all, he was incredibly paranoid that, far from making him better, a trip to the hospital would end in his death. As he said when advised to check himself in and get that blood clot sorted back in 1974: “If I go into the hospital, I’ll never come out alive.” In the end, however, the White House surgeons warned Nixon that if he didn’t go to hospital, he would almost certainly die anyway. He checked himself in – and his successor President Ford paid him a friendly visit.
But perhaps there was something to Nixon’s aversion to hospitals. After avoiding them all his life and enjoying a meteoric rise to the top job, when he did finally overcome his phobia and check himself in, he only got bad news. ‘Tricky Dicky’ was in a hospital bed when the results of the 1974 Midterm Elections came in – elections that were a disaster for the Republicans thanks to Watergate. And then, in 1994, he died in a New York hospital, having gone in having suffered a stroke but never making it out again.