Lerner Barron H
Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 West 168th Street, Room 938, New York, NY 10032, USA.
Bull Hist Med. 2007 Summer;81(2):386-406. doi: 10.1353/bhm.2007.0038.
While revisionist historians have challenged many standard interpretations of events in the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, one account has remained virtually unscathed: an article about Roosevelt's terminal illness and death written by one of his physicians, Howard G. Bruenn. Yet this article, like all historical documents, was not "objective" but rather a reflection of social and political forces--both from the 1940s, when Roosevelt became ill, and from 1970, when Bruenn's piece was published. This essay argues that Bruenn, the Roosevelt family, and the historian James MacGregor Burns worked together to craft a document that told the story of Roosevelt's decline with a predictable trajectory.
虽然修正主义历史学家对富兰克林·D·罗斯福总统任期内许多事件的标准解读提出了质疑，但有一种说法几乎未受影响：他的一位医生霍华德·G·布鲁恩撰写的一篇关于罗斯福晚期疾病和死亡的文章。然而，这篇文章与所有历史文献一样，并非“客观的”，而是社会和政治力量的反映——既反映了20世纪40年代罗斯福患病时的情况，也反映了1970年布鲁恩的文章发表时的情况。本文认为，布鲁恩、罗斯福家族以及历史学家詹姆斯·麦格雷戈·伯恩斯共同努力精心打造了一份文件，该文件讲述了罗斯福以可预测的轨迹走向衰落的故事。
