system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Sickness and philosophy

It seems that quite a few big names in philosophy suffered from physical health problems, particularly as a child. 

- Descartes is said to have had “delicate health” when he was younger and spent a lot of time in bed

- Locke suffered from something like chronic asthma 

- Rorty underwent a six year psychiatric analysis for obsessional neurosis as a teenager

- Deleuze had severe respiratory problems “from a young age”. Developed tuberculosis and underwent a lung removal

There might be something to say about sickness aiding the philosopher’s development for much time is spent in bed allowing for lengths of reading and introspection. We may find such a bout of sickness to be more impactful if the sufferer was young in age. 

**Any other examples come to mind, of great philosophers who suffered from some illness, particularly in their younger years?**

I understand there are a few threads about the philosopher and mental illness, I would like this one to keep to physical health, unless the mental illness occurred at a young age or was so incapacitating as to be bed-binding.
gpt
A few that I’m aware of:

Beginning in his late teens and lasting until the end of his life, Charles Sanders Peirce suffered from trigeminal neuralgia, a nerve disorder which causes sudden and severe pain in one’s face. According to his biographer, he took “ether, opium and morphine, alcohol, and later cocaine to control it. He was addicted by thirty, if not before, and came to depend on these drugs to get his work done”. This may have contributed to his social isolation. 

Jean-Paul Sartre developed exotropia and blindness in one eye at an early age, for which he was bullied by his classmates. 

Kurt Gödel contracted rheumatic fever (among other illnesses) as a child, which likely contributed to his lifelong hypochondria. 

John Rawls contracted both diphtheria and pneumonia when he was a child. The former spread from him to his brother Bobby and the latter spread from him to his brother Tommy, both of whom died from their illnesses. One biographer claimed that these tragedies were the “most important events in John's childhood”. 

Jürgen Habermas was born with a cleft palate, and he has stated that the experience of undergoing corrective surgery and his difficulties in communicating at a young age likely had an influence on his later philosophical preoccupations with communication.