In 1955, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack and was treated with warfarin. The publicity helped establish warfarin as a respectable and acceptable medical treatment. Its use in such a visible patient reassured physicians and the public about oral anticoagulation.

The event brought anticoagulation into public consciousness, linking national leadership with medical vulnerability. It helped normalise the idea that powerful public lives, like artistic lives, could be prolonged by hidden daily tablets, prompting poets to reflect on the fragility of human existence.