How Sick Was J.F.K.?

In 1947 J.F.K., then 30, learned he had Addison's disease, a dysfunction of the adrenal glands that, among other things, regulate blood sugar and the body's response to stress. The treatment? More corticosteroids. In the years that followed, as he rose from Congressman to Senator to presidential hopeful, Kennedy denied rumors of Addison's, some of them passed along to reporters by political opponents like Lyndon Johnson. He finally admitted to it in 1960, more or less, when he issued a statement acknowledging an "adrenal deficiency."

Kennedy's bad back was harder to deny, especially after near-fatal back surgery in 1954, when he was a Senator too much in the public eye to disappear for the eight months he needed to recover. But the back was absorbed into his legend, laid to football injuries and his indisputable heroism during World War II, explanations that merely buffed the chrome of J.F.K.'s image.

Historians have long complained that Kennedy's inner circle has been secretive and worse about his health. While preparing his 1993 book President Kennedy: Profile of Power, Richard Reeves requested access to J.F.K.'s medical records but was refused. He did succeed in interviewing the surgeons who performed the 1954 back operation, as well as Dr. Hans Kraus, who oversaw J.F.K.'s physical therapy in the last months of his presidency. "All of them told me they were asked to destroy certain records," says Reeves. "And they did."

Ted Sorensen, once one of Kennedy's closest advisers, is on the three-member committee that oversees Kennedy's papers at the library and that gave Dallek permission to open the medical records. But he strongly disputes the claim that Kennedy was virtually disabled by his health problems. "I often saw him take on and off his socks and shoes," he says. "I also saw him play touch football and carry on a campaign in 1960 that was absolutely exhausting for the rest of us."

Dallek says that seeing Kennedy's medical records gave him greater respect for the President's courage in conducting his presidency in the face of daily pain. But he also writes that Kennedy should have let voters know in 1960 just how sick he was. If what he found was a profile in courage, it's a profile in bad faith too.