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If the Social Security Administration had been around in 1776, the Founding Fathers might have retired on disability instead of giving birth to a nation. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other leaders of the American Revolution suffered chronic effects of diseases like smallpox, tuberculosis and malaria, and were devastated by the deaths of their children.
In her 2013 book "Revolutionary Medicine, The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health," Jeanne Abrams, a professor at the University of Denver, explained how the primitive health conditions in the 18th century affected not only ordinary colonists, but the leaders of the fledgling nation.
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