Video: '2nd October 1919: US President Woodrow Wilson suffers a stroke while in office'

(Thursday, October 2, 1919, about 8:30 a.m. EDT) — U.S. President Woodrow Wilson suffered a serious stroke today at the White House that left him paralyzed on his left side and with only partial vision in the right eye.

Wilson was confined to bed for weeks and sequestered from everyone except his wife and his physician, Dr. Cary Grayson.

Anxious to help the president recover, Wilson’s chief of staff (“secretary”) Joseph Patrick Tumulty, Grayson and First Lady Edith Wilson determined what documents the president read and who was allowed to communicate with him.

For her influence in the administration, some have described Mrs. Wilson as “the first female President of the United States.”

Video: 'The Great War episode 8 War Without End' (Wilson's stroke at 3:39)

By February 1920, the president’s true condition was publicly known. Many expressed qualms about Wilson’s fitness for the presidency at a time when the League fight was reaching a climax, and domestic issues such as strikes, unemployment, inflation and the threat of Communism were ablaze.

No one close to Wilson was willing to certify, as required by the Constitution, his “inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office.”

Though some members of Congress encouraged Vice President Thomas Marshall to assert his claim to the presidency, Marshall never attempted to replace Wilson.