--- title: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: Letters from Doctors description: We have no reason to disbelieve the candidates' physicians, but the health of President Roosevelt reveals a duplicitous history canonical: https://time.com/4495597/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-doctor-letter/ author: Karl Vick article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-09-15T21:07:39.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T00:38:00.855Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The Sketchy History of Presidential Health Letters og:description: What Roosevelt's personal doctor reveals about public letters of health og:url: https://time.com/4495597/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-doctor-letter/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4547be542b35c4c6/6988a65abc6cfc67503de99e/hillary-clinton6.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4500 og:image:height: 2531 og:image:alt: US-VOTE-DEMOCRATS-CLINTON og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Sketchy History of Presidential Health Letters twitter:description: What Roosevelt's personal doctor reveals about public letters of health twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4547be542b35c4c6/6988a65abc6cfc67503de99e/hillary-clinton6.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Sketchy History of Presidential Health Letters > Sponsored content. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent.  by [Karl Vick](https://time.com/author/karl-vick/)  ## Karl Vick Editor at Large Sep 15, 2016 9:07 PM UTC  Hillary Clinton arrives at Piedmont Triad International Airport on Sept. 15, 2016 in Greensboro, NC. Hillary Clinton arrives at Piedmont Triad International Airport on Sept. 15, 2016 in Greensboro, NC. Brendan Smialowski—AFP/Getty Images  by [Karl Vick](https://time.com/author/karl-vick/)  ## Karl Vick Editor at Large Sep 15, 2016 9:07 PM UTC Trust us, say the doctors who write letters assuring the voting public that their candidate-patients are hale and hearty. “She continues to remain healthy and fit to serve as President of the United States,” Hillary Clinton’s physician, Lisa Bardack, M.D., wrote, in a [two-page missive ](https://m.hrc.onl/secretary/10-documents/05-physician-letter/HRC%5Fphysician%5Fletter.pdf)that the Democrat’s campaign posted online Wednesday, three days after the candidate collapsed into a waiting van, her diagnosis of pneumonia still a secret. “In summary, Mr. Trump is in excellent physical health,” Harold N. Bornstein, M.D., wrote [in a letter of his own](https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/DJT%5FMedical%5FRecords%5F.pdf), which the Republican nominee released on Thursday. Bornstein’s new note, complete with cholesterol levels and body weight, was more restrained than the four paragraphs the hirsute Manhattan physician had [hastily banged out](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-doctor-wrote-health-letter-just-5-minutes-limo-waited-n638526) on Dec. 4: “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” Bornstein wrote [in that one](https://www.donaldjtrump.com/images/uploads/trump%5Fhealth%5Frecord.pdf), begun, “to whom it my \[sic\] concern.” There’s no reason to doubt either of the doctors as individuals, of course. But their timing is lousy. They are issuing their assurances in the shadow of a history of deception laid out in devastating detail by the journalist Joseph Lelyveld in _His Final Battle: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt_. The book, published Sept. 5, offers a compellingly nuanced, almost day-by-day account of the great man’s final year of life, which he spent juggling command of World War II, the creation of a post-war world order and the question of who should succeed him, should he live to run for a fourth term. FDR was at death’s door 11 months before he actually expired—though neither the public nor any members of his family knew it because of the extraordinary duplicity of his personal physician, Ross McIntire. An ear, nose and throat specialist and U.S. Navy officer, McIntire always insisted the president was in “robust health.” Anyone close enough to see Roosevelt’s ashen face in early 1944 knew otherwise, of course. When FDR’s daughter Anna finally got her father to Bethesda Naval Hospital that March, a top cardiologist detected a heart so diseased it had grown “enormous” and shifted inside the chest. The cardiologist, Howard Bruenn, later recalled the president’s condition as “shocking” and “god awful.” He asked McIntire for the his patient’s medical records, but never got them, and after FDR’s death the records disappeared from the hospital safe—almost surely destroyed by McIntire, notes Lelyveld. Less than an hour after the examination, Roosevelt was back at the White House facing reporters in his weekly press conference. He told them he was dealing with “lingering bronchitis,” and the conventions of the day prevented anyone from challenging him, even in print. The only expert permitted to speak was his physician. “As always, Admiral McIntire smothered legitimate questions with a bland sauce of folksy reassurance.” The incumbent would live another 11 months, finally perishing from an aneurysm while visiting Warm Springs, Georgia, where his father had extended his life by taking the waters. By then, the president’s blood pressure had been dangerously high for years, a condition diagnosed long before congestive heart failure. Both were kept secret by his personal physician, whom Lelyveld, a former editor of the New York _Times_, pillories relentlessly and by all appearances justifiably. FDR clearly valued McIntire for his political sense as much as his medical abilities; he received steady promotions, from lieutenant commander when he entered the White House, to vice-admiral. But he was no servant of the people, even after his boss’s death. McIntire’s 1946 memoir,[_White House Physician_](https://www.amazon.com/White-house-physician-Ross-McIntire/dp/B0006AQXE6/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473964172&sr=8-1&keywords=mcintire+white+house+physician)_,_ concludes Lelyveld, _w_as “remarkable for its false leads and contradictions.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4495597/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-doctor-letter/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4495597/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-doctor-letter/"},"headline":"The Sketchy History of Presidential Health Letters","datePublished":"2016-09-15T21:07:39.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T00:38:00.855Z","description":"We have no reason to disbelieve the candidates' physicians, but the health of President Roosevelt reveals a duplicitous history","url":"https://time.com/4495597/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-doctor-letter/","keywords":["Books"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4547be542b35c4c6/6988a65abc6cfc67503de99e/hillary-clinton6.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Karl Vick","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/karl-vick/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4547be542b35c4c6/6988a65abc6cfc67503de99e/hillary-clinton6.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"US-VOTE-DEMOCRATS-CLINTON","caption":"US-VOTE-DEMOCRATS-CLINTON","creditText":"Brendan Smialowski—AFP/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4495597/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-doctor-letter/","name":"The Sketchy History of Presidential Health Letters"}}]}] ```