WASHINGTON - The first thorough examination of President John F. Kennedy's medical records, conducted by an independent presidential historian with a medical consultant, has found that Kennedy suffered from more ailments, was in far greater pain and was taking many more medications than the public knew at the time or biographers have since described.
As president, he was famous for having a bad back. Since his death, biographers have pieced together details of other illnesses, including persistent digestive problems and Addison's disease, a life-threatening lack of adrenal function.
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, anti-anxiety agents, stimulants and sleeping pills. He also took hormones to keep him alive, with extra doses in times of stress.
The president sometimes 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 for access to the records, granted Dallek's request. The approval was due partly to his "tremendous reputation," said one of them, Theodore C. Sorensen, who was the president's special counsel.
Dallek is writing a biography, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, to be published next year by Little, Brown. He was allowed to examine the records over two days last spring in the company of a physician, Dr. Jeffrey A. Kelman, and to make notes but not photocopies. Their findings appear in the December issue of The Atlantic, and they discussed them in interviews with The New York Times.
The new information shows how far Kennedy went to conceal his ailments and shatters the image he projected as the most vigorous of men. It is a remarkable example of a phenomenon that has been seen many times, notably in the case of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Yet for all of Kennedy's suffering, the ailments did not incapacitate him, Dallek concluded. In fact, he said, although Kennedy sometimes complained of grogginess, detailed transcripts of tape-recorded conversations during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and other times show the president as lucid and in firm command.
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. At that time he was a Massachusetts senator, was campaigning unsuccessfully for the 1956 Democratic nomination for vice president, and was quietly planning his 1960 presidential bid.
In December 1962, after Jacqueline Kennedy complained that her husband seemed "depressed" from taking antihistamines for food allergies, he took a prescribed anti-anxiety drug, Stelazine, for two days. At other times he took similar medications regularly.
The records show that Kennedy variously took codeine, Demerol and methadone for pain; Ritalin, a stimulant; meprobamate and librium for anxiety; barbiturates for sleep; thyroid hormone; and injections of a blood derivative, presumably to fight infections.
In the White House, Kennedy received "seven to eight injections of procaine in his back in the same sitting" before news conferences and other events, Kelman said.
Although not a complete record of Kennedy's lifetime medical history - much of which remains sealed in private hospitals - the disclosures provide a broad, authoritative view.
In The Atlantic, Dallek writes that although Kennedy's secrecy can be taken as "another stain on his oft-criticized character," the records also reveal the "quiet stoicism of a man struggling to endure extraordinary pain and distress."