Choir and Chorus Members

Chapter 1:  Babe Ruth’s Cancer

His voice became progressively hoarse, and he experienced severe pain behind his left eye. He wrote in his autobiography (The Babe Ruth Story, published in 1948) that his “voice sounded like somebody gargling ashes.”

Because hoarseness heralded the onset of Ruth’s disease and plagued him throughout his illness, his doctors assumed he had cancer of the larynx (voicebox). This diagnosis was reinforced when Ruth admitted to using tobacco and drinking alcohol since he was a child. He once told a reporter, “I learned early to drink beer, wine, whiskey, and I think I was about five when I first chewed tobacco.” As an adult, he was an inveterate cigar smoker.

An autopsy revealed that he did not have cancer of the larynx.