President James Madison himself had a life-threatening bout of illness at a nationally-inconvenient time – during the War of 1812. Madison had been prone to various types of fever throughout his life, and tried to preserve his health by returning to the mountain climate of Montpelier each summer.

What did James Madison suffer from?

From his middle years on, Madison was plagued with "biliousness." This included attacks of "bilious fever" 1. A physician writing in the 1960s thought these symptoms of chronic cholecystitis 1 (inflammation of the gallbladder). Chronic arthritis afflicted Madison from middle age onwards 1.

Did James Madison have seizures?

At the end of his presidency he drafted an autobiography explaining that he had a “constitutional liability to sudden attacks, somewhat resembling epilepsy, and suspending the intellectual functions.” Madison's principal biographer deduced from this that he suffered “epileptoid hysteria,” but it is much more likely ...