Benjamin Franklin was appointed to the Committee of Five tasked with drafting the Declaration of Independence in June 1776. He barely participated. Laid up with what he called "a severe Fit of the Gout," Franklin spent most of the month recovering at a friend's house outside Philadelphia, missing both Congress and committee meetings. He did, however, review Jefferson's draft by mail and made what historians describe as "small but important" changes. Founding a nation from bed, in your bathrobe, in extraordinary pain, honestly, still more productive than most.
The next year in 1777 he was also suffering from gout and appeared at the Constitutional Convention because, some sources say, prisoners carried him in a sedan chair.
