What were Heinleins health problems?
They were numerous and affected him throughout his lifetime, influencing both his choice to be a writer and often the things about which he wrote. As a young Navy officer, in 1933, Heinlein contracted tuberculosis and was discharged from the Navy as “totally and permanently disabled,” to his dismay. He very much wanted to serve his country and attempted to reenlist at the outbreak of World War II, but was refused. He served as a civilian engineer at the Naval Air Experimental Station by Philadelphia. Fears of possible relapses of tuberculosis happened at other times in his life, once sidetracking college studies in physics and mathematics at UCLA. His wife, Ginny Heinlein, developed altitude sickness while they lived in Colorado that required them to relocate to Santa Cruz, California. About the time of the writing/rewriting of “I Will Fear No Evil,” Heinlein nearly died of peritonitis. It took him years to recover. In 1977 he had a blocked carotid artery that led to a near stroke, a t
