Theodore Roosevelt's Health

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Theodore Roosevelt differed from the other presidents of his time. Unlike other presidents who grew up in log cabins, Roosevelt was born in New York to a wealthy family. While he didn’t have financial struggles growing up, he did have severe health problems that impaired him in many ways. He was a sickly child with debilitating asthma that prevented him from going to school and socializing with other children his age. He was homeschooled by private tutors, which helped shape him into the independent, assertive adult he was. His bronchial asthma caused many sleepless nights and no remedies gave him a break. His parents tried to help and made him inhale the suffocating fumes of Stramonium or boiling water with aromatics in the kettle. One …show more content…

This was a form of healing for him. Adulthood gave Teddy a break with his asthma, but his grief brought it back with a deadly force. This relapse brought on suspicion of tuberculosis, so his doctor suggested he move west. Reluctantly, he did, bringing on a long history of broken bones. He also survived several sickness outbreaks in Cuba and Florida. After becoming President, Roosevelt kept up on his boxing skills. One day during a workout, Theodore was punched in the left eye, rendering him almost completely blind. After leaving office, Roosevelt traveled abroad on a hunting trip, returning with numerous trophy animals. He returned to find a growing divide in President Taft’s cabinet. When the Republican convention in 1912 steamrollered Taft’s nomination for a second term, Roosevelt bolted the party and became candidate of a third “Progressive” party. During this campaign, he was stalked by a paranoiac named John Schrank. The spectacular Teddy Roosevelt was the most publicized figure of his time, and stalking him gave the shy man a feeling of self-importance. He then started fantasizing about killing T.R. He rationalized this crime by telling himself that he was upholding the rule of no third …show more content…

Two weeks later, Roosevelt lost to Woodrow Wilson, and he took the loss with grace. After his loss, he led a safari, eventually contracting a tropical illness similar to the malaria he had when he was in Cuba as a child. He also cut his thigh along a jagged rock, which would become infected and develop abscesses. This was followed by a blood infection and symptom of dysentery. These infections caused his ears to become infected, leaving him deaf in one ear. At sixty years old, Theodore Roosevelt was blind in one eye and deaf in one ear. Eventually healing from his trip to Africa, Roosevelt returned to the Middle East, which was one of his favorite places to visit. The unavoidable motion and friction of his chronically infected thigh during the journey brought on a severe infection of erysipelas, a type of streptococcus that spread through the surface tissue, producing red, blistering skin. Before the discovery of sulfa drugs and antibiotics, blood poisoning was a very likely consequence. Roosevelt recovered, however, to receive a few weeks later the crushing news that his youngest son, Quentin, serving in the Air Corps in France, had been shot down and killed. His leg continued to give him troubles throughout the remainder of his

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