Synthetic "Vigor"

John F. Kennedy and Dr. "Feelgood"

Today's essay is more of a history chronicle as opposed to our regular WEB page inserts. But I felt it was so interesting as to warrant an inclusion. We draw today from Carlson P, "Jack Kennedy and Dr. Feelgood," Am. History, Vol. 46 (2), June 2011. We also draw from an article from the NY Times; Altman L, Purdum T, "In JFK File; Hidden Illness, Pain and Pills," NYT, Nov. 2002.

Kennedy in his famous rocking chair, seated right. It was well known that the rocking chair helped relieve his chronic and debilitating back pain. Here, seated in the Oval Office of the White House during a meeting, 1962.

The Dr. Feelgood in this story was real. His actual name was Max Jacobson. He wore thick glasses, was a German expatriot who spoke with a thick German accent and he concocted "original" brews of medicines for his clients. His elixers contained vitamins, steroids, occasionally animal placenta, bone marrow but always high levels of amphetimines. He was well known in the entertainment industry as he injected his secret cocktails into the bodies of Eddie Fisher, Yule Brenner, Truman Capote, Mickey Mantle, Nelson Rockefellar and many others. His shots sent these celebrities soaring, full of energy to their various gigs brimming with confidence and bubbling with ecstasy. At least for awhile before the drug cocktail wore off.

Fifty years ago, in May 1961, President John Kennedy asked Mac Jacobson to accompany him and his wife Jackie to the Vienna Summit meeting where Kennedy was to meet and talk with Soviet Premier, Nikita Krushchev. Naturally Jacobson agreed to go. Why wouldn't he? Max was a refugee from Hitler's Germany and was only too pleased and proud to be one of the personal physician's on the staff to the President of the United States.

The story of President Kennedy and Dr. Feelgood is one of the strangest, if not the most bizarre in U.S. Presidential history. We had an ailing President, in great and constant pain due to a history of spinal injuries along with a host of additional ailments including Addison's Disease, secretly receiving injections of some secret, mind/mood altering drug cocktail from an eccentric "physician." And all this at or near the height of the Cold War where nuclear tensions were at a peak. Now, details have emerged many years after Kennedy's own death, the death of Dr. Jacobson and his revealing diary as well as interviews with those that were there and saw what was going on.

But newly disclosed medical files covering the last eight years of Kennedy's life, including X-rays and prescription records, show that he took painkillers, antianxiety agents, stimulants and sleeping pills, as well as hormones to keep him alive, with extra doses in times of stress.

At times the president took as many as eight medications a day, says the historian, Robert Dallek. A committee of three longtime Kennedy family associates, who for decades refused all requests to look at the records, granted Mr. Dallek's. By the time of the missile crisis, Kennedy was taking antispasmodics to control colitis; antibiotics for a urinary tract infection; and increased amounts of hydrocortisone and testosterone, along with salt tablets, to control his adrenal insufficiency and boost his energy.

The records show that Kennedy was hospitalized for back and intestinal ailments in New York and Boston on nine previously undisclosed occasions from 1955 to 1957, when he was a Senator from Massachusetts, campaigning unsuccessfully for the 1956 Democratic vice-presidential nomination — and quietly planning his 1960 presidential bid. In short, Kennedy was a medical mess. Add to that, for many years, Kennedy's back problems were largely attributed to injuries suffered when his Navy patrol boat, PT-109, was sunk in World War II. In fact, he had significant back pain before that. Mr. Dallek said his vertebrae may have begun degenerating as a result of the steroids he may have taken for intestinal problems in the late 1930's. He actually suffered from at least three fractured vertebral segments brought on by early osteoporosis.

For much of his life, Kennedy also suffered from severe and potentially dangerous bouts of diarrhea, which doctors suspected might have been from ulcerative colitis. Repeated examinations did not confirm that. Their ultimate diagnosis was spastic colitis, which today would be described as irritable bowel syndrome. Kennedy also took antidiarrheal drugs like Lomotil for relief, and he lost so much weight and strength from his ailments that he received the male hormone, testosterone, to build up his muscles. He also had high blood cholesterol, often in the range of 300, once at 410, which is twice the level now considered desirable.

In 1954, doctors in Manhattan inserted a metal plate to fuse Kennedy's damaged vertebrae, but an abscess forced its removal. Later he developed abscesses at the site of injections, and one had to be drained surgically, the records show. Against this medically shocking backdrop, Dr. Max Jacobson showed up. One can imagine how someone like Kennedy would literally jump at a chance to see his pain disappear, even for a few hours.

"Max was a strange man, loud, arrogant, kind of a mad scientist type," recalls Chuck Spalding, a New York Businessman who consulted Jacobson in 1960, seeking relief from exhaustion. Jacobson promptly gave Spalding a shot. "I went over the top of the building!" Spalding recalls. "I felt wonderful, full of energy, capable of doing just about anything, I didn't know exactly what he was giving me, but it was a magic potion." Spalding went on to tell his friend, Jack Kennedy about this magic doctor with his magic potions and that is how Kennedy came into contact with Dr. Feelgood.

Kennedy told the doctor that the grind of the 1960 Presidential election campaign had left him tired and weak, Jacobson recalled in his diary. He diagnosed Kennedy with stress and gave him a shot. "After his treatment, he told me his muscle weakness had disappeared," Jacobson wrote. "He felt cool, calm and very alert. I gave him a bottle of vitamin drops to be taken orally after which he left."

Jacobson liked to maintain an aura of mystery about what he did. Interestingly, this kept the patients coming back for more and more. Eventually, Jacobson was treating Jackie Kennedy for post-partum depression and migraine headaches with astounding results.

The big issue however was John Kennedy's chronic back pain. He had had accidents as a kid with football but the real problem stemmed from when his PT boat was sliced in half by a Japanese destroyer, the Amagiri on the night of August 2, 1943. His exploits that night were legendary but Kennedy never recovered from the injuries he suffered to his spine. His back was in so much pain one day that his White House physician on staff Dr. Janet Travell was injecting procaine into his back several times a day. This, on top of the heavy doses of corticosteroids that Kennedy was already receiving for his Addison's Disease. Addison's Disease is a rare adrenal condition where someone's adrenal glands just don't produce the required adrenaline a person needs to get through the day. The corticosteroids had side effects such as anxiety, irritability, insomnia and the Addison's Disease itself gave a unique bronzing color to the skin. Privately, Kennedy hobbled on crutches much of the time or rocked in his rocking chair, both of which gave him back pain relief.

But meeting Krushchev was a whole new matter entirely. Kennedy didn't want to seem weak, wounded, tired or in any way compromised in front of the bombastic Soviet leader, himself a WW II infantry veteran. Kennedy got his shots from Dr. Feelgood, the nickname everyone called him, and thus it came to pass: President Kennedy met with Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev in a key Summit Meeting relatively high on speed. To sum it up, let us turn to a quote from Dr. Hans Kraus who treated Kennedy's back pain with conventional means, speaking of Dr. Jacobson's injections, "No President with his finger on the red button has any business taking stuff like that." 

 Well said Hans.

Dr. Haberstroh is a Boston Chiropractor and a Somerville Chiropractor.