Roosevelt’s Physical and Psychological Health

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

This chapter contains sections titled:

- A History of Health Problems
- Poliomyelitis
- The Response to the Disease and Treatment
- Debates about FDR's Health
- The 1944 Campaign
- April 12, 1945
- Health and FDR's Legacy
- References
Original languageAmerican English
Title of host publicationA Companion to Franklin D. Roosevelt
EditorsWilliam D. Pederson
PublisherWiley-Blackwell
Chapter4
Pages59-76
Number of pages18
ISBN (Electronic)978-1444395181
ISBN (Print)978-1444330168
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 25 2011

Publication series

NameBlackwell Companions to American History

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • General Arts and Humanities

Keywords

  • Debates about FDR's health - his health, an issue throughout his reemergence on the political stage
  • Disease, impacting the entire Roosevelt family - Eleanor Roosevelt assuming the role of caretaker, placing considerable strain on her
  • Health problems in childbirth, his mother Sara Roosevelt - being given pain-killing chloroform, with young Franklin, constantly battling illnesses
  • Physical and psychological health - Roosevelt's extraordinary resolve in the face of a debilitating ailment, earning for him awe and appreciation
  • Poliomyelitis, defining event in Roosevelt's life - forcing, in his prime, to take a seven-year hiatus from politics, spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair
  • Roosevelt's health, not helped by the fact - continually ignoring physicians' advice to cut back on smoking and drinking
  • Roosevelt's health, raising questions - some of them still unanswered
  • Roosevelt's paralysis progression to his trunk, hands, parts of his face - uncertainty as to why Roosevelt was stricken with polio as an adult
  • Roosevelt, both psychologically and emotionally - experience of a wedding, as a traumatic event
  • Scholars, labeling Roosevelt's manipulation of the press "sophisticated" - masking his disability with props as a cape, prince-nez glasses, and cigarette holder

Cite this