Another Graphic and Important Report of Roosevelt's Seizures

I've been going through my files from my trip to the Herbert Hoover Library in Iowa where I went to peruse the Walter Trohan papers. I have already shared a number of the documents with you but this one, for some reason escaped. When I saw it again today, its importance became quite evident.

The players:

1) The Colonel- Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune , a notably anti-Roosevelt yet quite credible newspaper.

2) pmaloney- J. Loy. "Pat" Maloney, managing editor of the Tribune who was later responsible for the infamous 1948 "Dewey Defeats Truman" Headline

3) Walter- Walter Trohan, long-standing White House reporter for the Tribune and the source of many unique and credible accounts of Roosevelt's behavior and health. Highly suggested reading- his 1975 memoir "Political Animals".

4) Anna Boettinger- Roosevelt's oldest child and only daughter.

click on document for greater resolution

What you have just read is a reliable account of FDR's daughter describing her father's seizures. There is one glaring error, they began months before he ran the fourth time, not the third, nonetheless dramatic. As previously written, these events were interpreted as "little strokes" or "burstings" by those outside Roosevelt's very inner circle (Ross McIntire, Howard Bruenn, "Pa" Watson, Harry Hopkins and most probably a number of other physicians who treated him). They were quite clearly what neurologists (as I am) would diagnose as complex partial seizures.

The implications are obvious (see the Dwyer memorandum on this blog for yet another graphic report)