Even cowgirls get the blues, and even world leaders get sick and die. Sometimes it happens while they were in office, although the public seldom knows. It was a long time before we knew just how much Woodrow Wilson’s stroke affected his second term. John F. Kennedy’s medical problems were successfully concealed throughout his time in public office. When Reagan’s fall to Alzheimer’s first set in will probably be a secret for another couple of decades. Miterrand’s cancer was hidden from the French public. The Italian press wasn’t writing about how serious Bossi’s health problems are.

The Rt Hon Lord David Owen, CH, a former British foreign secretary, tackles this issue in QJM, an Oxford journal on medicine, and not your usual place for political reading

Diseased, demented, depressed: serious illness in Heads of State

As both a physician and a politician, I was first touched by the question of how illness can affect the decision-making of Heads of State or Government when I met the Shah of Iran in Tehran in May 1977. He appeared to be at the height of his power: self-confident, and enjoying his global role in helping to determine world oil prices. It would have been a great help to have known then, and particularly a year later, that he had been suffering from chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. …

The French Foreign Minister Louis de Guiringaud told me later, when we had both left office, that he had known of the diagnosis. But he never told me when I was Foreign Secretary, or Cyrus Vance, the US Secretary of State. Had I known I would have pressed far more vigorously early in 1978, and certainly been adamant in the late summer and autumn of that year, that the Shah should stand down immediately on health grounds. … However, we were still treating him as an imperial leader, capable of making bold decisions, when in retrospect what he needed was to be told what to do and virtually forced to take treatment in Switzerland. If he had done so, the Revolution in Iran would not have taken place in the way that it did, President Carter might have won a second term, and certainly the history of the Middle East would have been very different.

There aren’t any easy answers to these questions, as Owen suggests at the end of the article

Reluctantly, I must also conclude that if a Head of State or Government becomes ill in office, different considerations apply and there can be no set rules. … Formal procedures for fixed medical examinations for an elected incumbent is a process with a pseudo-objectivity which can be blind to the complexities and dynamics of government, as well as the uncertain relationship between disease and the capacity to make decisions.

Thanks to Electrolite for the tip.

As I walk through the valley where I harvest my grain
I take a look at my wife and realize she’s very plain
But that’s just perfect for an Amish like me
You know, I shun fancy things like electricity
At 4:30 in the morning I’m milkin’ cows
Jebediah feeds the chickens and Jacob plows… fool
And I’ve been milkin’ and plowin’ so long that
Even Ezekiel thinks that my mind is gone
I’m a man of the land, I’m into discipline
Got a Bible in my hand and a beard on my chin
But if I finish all of my chores and you finish thine
Then tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1699

We been spending most our lives
Living in an Amish paradise
We’re all crazy Mennonites
Living in an Amish paradise
There’s no cops or traffic lights
Living in an Amish paradise
But you’d probably think it bites
Living in an Amish paradise

– Amish Paradise, “Weird Al” Yankovic

Belgium is hell in July.

The Belgians, of course, know this instinctively. I don’t quite understand how a nation can continue to function when the entire population is on vacation at the same time for a whole month. The trams get cut back to the point where they’re useless out in the eastern suburbs of Brussels and the weather isn’t much to write home about either. I still have to wear a jacket in the morning in late July.

Of course, I have this extra problem: allergies. Something in Belgium sprays its pollen in July. Something that just about kills me every time. And every summer, I tell myself, next year. Next year, don’t forget to take your goddamn vacation in July like every one else, and get as far from Belgium as you can! And every year – this is my third year here – I have to be in Belgium in July for some reason.

This year, it’s the final report for my research in translation automation. The work is done. The results are excellent, spectacular even. In another year, under other circumstances, I would feel tempted to find some venture capital and see if I can revolutionise the language industry. Instead, I’ve spent the last week wheezing in bed, taking hits off my Duovent bong, popping Tylenol and Claratin, and snorting this foul-smellng shit my doctor gave me for hay fever.

I’m suffering from the most profound writer’s block I think I’ve ever had. I can’t remember ever having felt so unable to organise or express my thoughts. I have tons to blog, and vast quantities of material on how to profit from the statistical properties of the lexicon, but I can barely bring myself to read my e-mail. Writing this paper is like having acute constipation. I push and I push and it hurts like hell, and all that comes out is a little bit of crap.

But, I’m back at work today and that brings me to my e-mail, specifically a letter pointing me to an article in Saturday’s Guardian about Manitoba Mennonite novelist Miriam Toews:
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