Was George Washington Really the Father of Our Country?: A Clinical Geneticist Looks at World History

John F. Kennedy conquered Addison's disease--an adrenal disorder which caused weakness, lethargy, bouts of vomiting and prostration--by taking cortisone daily, starting around 1950. Geneticist-physician Marion ( The Boy Who Felt No Pain ) theorizes that JFK's recovery instilled feelings of invincibility that spurred his political rise. Marion's compulsively readable retrospective diagnoses throw an often startling light on figures and events in world history. He deduces that Abraham Lincoln had a congenital heart malformation which contributed to his awkward appearance; the taunts Lincoln endured because of his looks steeled his hatred of discrimination and slavery, in Marion's view. Other chapters cover Napoleon Bonaparte's gynecomastia (enlargement of male breasts), George Washington's sterility (perhaps due to a rare chromosomal disorder) and English King George III's probable porphyria, a hereditary metabolic disease that impaired his ability to reason, may have hardened the monarch's policies toward the 13 American colonies. Illustrated. (Feb.)