Dr. Feelgood (3 page)

Max Jacobson’s connection to the Kennedys began in 1960, when one of Jacobson’s patients, Chuck Spalding, Kennedy’s former roommate at Harvard, placed a very confidential phone call to him to request a private consultation on behalf of an unidentified friend. This “friend” was in a tight situation, Spalding said, and needed Jacobson’s medical advice. Jacobson had been introduced to Spalding by internationally known fashion photographer Mark Shaw, who was another of his patients. Jacobson had in turn met Shaw through his longtime friend, World War II Army Air Force glider pilot Lt. Col. Mike Samek, whose wife was an editor at New York’s
Mademoiselle
magazine. Shaw, like Samek, had been an officer in the OSS during the war and, like most members of the American clandestine services, never left the profession. From the OSS, Shaw had become a nonofficial cover officer, or NOC, for the CIA, a job that required complete anonymity, a “legend,” or a cover profession to mask what he really did, and the ability to insinuate himself into critical relationships to send intelligence information back to the agency.

As an internationally recognized photographer, Shaw had almost unlimited access to the popularly termed jet-set of the 1950s by virtue of his acclaimed magazine spreads featuring Audrey Hepburn, Pablo Picasso, Brigitte Bardot, Elizabeth Taylor, Danny Kaye, Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, Yves St. Laurent, and countless other high-profile notables in art, literature, and show business around the world. But the 1950s was also the decade of the Red Scare and the blacklist. With Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hearings stoking the flames of fear, the American public became obsessively paranoid over the threat of Communist infiltration of American institutions, especially in the entertainment industry and halls of government. Mark Shaw, therefore, was the consummate fly on the wall, snapping away his photos and privy to intimate conversations held in unguarded moments, conversations of which he took very careful note.

Shaw also presented an additional opportunity to his handlers at the CIA. Because of his relationship with friends in high places, Shaw had established a relationship with the Kennedys and ultimately became the official Kennedy family photographer after JFK won the 1960 election. But, before that, Mark Shaw introduced his old friend Chuck Spalding to Dr. Jacobson. Soon Spalding, as well as Shaw, would become addicted to the substance in Max’s magic injections. Thus, when Jack Kennedy called and complained of his lack of stamina during the campaign, Spalding placed the confidential phone call asking Max to consult with the then-Massachusetts senator, who was running for president against vice president Richard M. Nixon.

It was in the early fall of 1960, just before the celebrated, first televised presidential Kennedy-Nixon debate, when Spalding made the call. “Can you handle this consultation with utmost secrecy?” Spalding asked before finally identifying his former roommate by name. It was vital that Jacobson take extreme steps to avoid any public scrutiny. The last thing JFK needed was to be spotted visiting this strange Manhattan doctor. JFK had already been outed in the media over his health issues, and his campaign staff had spent time dispelling those potentially harmful rumors. Kennedy-the candidate’s Addison’s disease, constant back pain, high stress, migraines, and gastrointestinal disorders all had to be kept secret from the public.

There was acute vigilance by the Kennedy staff to keep JFK’s illnesses under the radar. JFK’s father, Joseph Kennedy, had carefully guarded this secret from the moment his son became a congressman and later passed this duty on to son Bobby. However, in May 1962, rumors swirled that JFK was under the care of Dr. Jacobson.
Esquire
magazine’s managing editor, Harold Hayes, commissioned writer and Jacobson patient Arthur Steuer to do a story about JFK’s employing Dr. Jacobson as his physician. Jacobson, who by 1962 felt secure in his position with JFK and was not shy at boasting about his treatment of the president, told Steuer of his relationship and history with the president. This caused a flap in the media that had to be quieted; the Kennedy advisors strongly believed that any leak of the president’s illness would weaken the office of the president and strongly derail his influence, and Jacobson was later scolded for his loose talk.
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The task fell to none other than Mrs. Kennedy’s chief of staff and social secretary Letitia Baldrige, who responded to Mr. Steuer’s inquiry on White House letterhead, saying that her brother, Howard Malcolm Baldrige, Jr., a former secretary of commerce, was going to use Dr. Jacobson for his Marie-Strumpell disease, implying that it was not JFK who would receive treatment from the doctor.
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But, despite any cover-ups to the press, it was John F. Kennedy who invited Dr. Jacobson to the White House to treat him and Jackie, and it was he who ultimately asked Jacobson to move into the White House so he could be close at hand.

But none of what was in the future was evident in the summer of 1960 when JFK had his first meeting with Jacobson. At that time, Senator Kennedy was perceived by the media to be a youthful and vigorous naval war hero. The cover-up of the senator’s poor health was in full steam during the campaign, even though rumors were circulating concerning his wartime injuries and bad back. On July 5, 1960, Kennedy physicians Dr. Janet Travell and Dr. Eugene J. Cohen sent a signed letter to JFK for public dissemination that was created specifically for those they called the “media vultures,”
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in which they flatly denied that the senator was in ill health. The letter stated, “As your physicians for over five years and [with] knowledge of your medical records for over 15 years, we wish to provide you with a straightforward brief medical statement concerning your health. . . . As stated to you in our recent letter of 6/11/60 we reiterate that you are in superb physical condition . . . you should see your doctors once or twice a year for a routine check-up . . . no limitations are placed on your arduous activities . . .” This letter was distributed to targeted friends in the press. It was an utter fabrication and a complete cover-up of Senator John Kennedy’s physical condition.

With the old-line establishment physicians Travell and Cohen protecting the Kennedy mystique from the press, JFK looked below the radar to find relief from the persistent pain that was draining his strength and causing him great fatigue. Not unlike Michael Jackson, who sought out willing physicians to ease his pain, Kennedy reached out to his friends to find his own sub rosa doctor. And he found him on New York’s Upper East Side.

Unlike the upscale and fashionable office of Dr. Travell on West 16th Street, just north of New York’s Greenwich Village and only a few blocks away from Union Square, Max’s East 72nd Street office in Manhattan was not a typical medical practice. It was more like a research lab with a celebrity waiting room. Actress Alice Ghostley’s husband Felice Orlandi, who worked as Max’s assistant for several years in the 1960s, remembered that Jacobson’s “office was often a complete and utter disaster area. Papers were all over the office, waste cans were overfilled, syringes were strewn across the floor, empty vials were everywhere. He was too cheap to hire a cleaning service. His back lab was like a war zone. Max muttered and mumbled quite a bit. He reminded me a bit like Vincent Price in one of his horror films. His fingernails were just absolutely filthy and he reeked of tobacco and formaldehyde.”
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Jacobson’s close friend Mike Samek concurred about the office: “I tried to impress upon Max to clean up the office. In fact, I spent a weekend with a neighborhood kid and we built a wall of shelving in his lab to restore order. It even had slots where he could label the ingredients. Max had a perverse sense of humor and enjoyed the clutter. He claimed that there was an organization to the disorganization. There was very little regulation by the state in that time.”
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A frequent Jacobson patient, singer Eddie Fisher, later recalled that “the office looked more like a chemist’s laboratory than a doctor’s office and Max looked like a mad scientist, I guess. I remember noticing at our first meeting that his fingernails were filthy, stained with chemicals. He was nothing like any other doctor I’d ever met. He was a German refugee, with big thick glasses, a big thick accent, and a completely commanding personality.”
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Jacobson, who was sixty years old when he met Senator Kennedy, was still a robust man. He was a dedicated swimmer who stayed in good physical condition by doing multiple laps every morning. He had been an amateur boxer and studied jujitsu. He was barrel chested and quite muscular but had a prominent pot belly and cut “a hulking, disheveled figure . . . [with] large horn-rimmed glasses with thick lenses [that] magnified roaming, unsettled eyes.”
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After taking the phone call from Chuck Spalding, Jacobson became anxious. A promised relationship with a politically prominent patient was as mysterious as it was exciting. Late that same afternoon, the senator showed up. The office, which was usually jam-packed with celebrity patients such as Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Alan Jay Lerner, and Anthony Quinn, was now deserted. Jacobson had cleared all of them out.

Just as Spalding had promised to his former roommate, the doctor was gracious, but he stared at the young Democratic presidential candidate through the eyes of a physician as well a civilian basking in the glow of the senator’s charismatic presence. Jacobson stared long and hard because he believed that by looking directly into someone’s eyes, he could learn everything there was to learn about the person. He was impressed by Kennedy’s earnestness and what he perceived to be the candidate’s clarity. He noted every aspect of Kennedy’s physical condition even before they spoke. In his own records, Jacobson remembered JFK as especially thin, with long fatigue lines in his face and sagging cheeks.

The candidate said that he had given the slip to his security personnel because, as he made clear, he wanted complete anonymity. Jacobson reassured him that he would absolutely keep all their conversations confidential.

Although Senator Kennedy tried to be affable as he stood uncomfortably in Jacobson’s office, the doctor could tell he was put off by the cramped space and Jacobson’s disheveled appearance. To break the tension, Kennedy began by making small talk about Mark Shaw, who had just been put on a special assignment to photograph Kennedy and his family. Kennedy said that both Shaw and Chuck Spalding had spoken very highly of Jacobson’s medical procedures, which had helped them overcome the intense strain of their professions. Both of them had recommended that Kennedy pay Jacobson a visit after a brutal primary campaign against senators Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson that left him in need of a jumpstart now that the general election campaign was in full swing.

What was Kennedy’s medical complaint? Jacobson, ever the skilled diagnostician, asked this while peering at his new patient. It was the demands of the campaign, Kennedy explained. It was draining him. He was fatigued. His muscles felt weak. And this weakness was interfering with his concentration and his speech. Worse, he was getting laryngitis. He was looking ahead to a series of televised debates with his opponent, Vice President Nixon—a fierce and seasoned debater, a street fighter who was known to go after his opponents’ jugulars. Kennedy was worried, and the strain was taking its toll. Even though they had been friends and colleagues in the United States Senate, Kennedy had no illusions about how Nixon would go after him in the debates.

Jacobson was not at all surprised by Kennedy’s description of his physical problems. The senator’s complaints, however, constituted the most common symptoms of stress, which, in Jacobson’s opinion, if not addressed, would only become more severe. He took a short case history, asking the presidential candidate about any previous diseases he had contracted, accidents or injuries from the war, and treatments he had been given. JFK started by describing his Addison’s disease, and how it resulted in extreme weakness, fluctuations in blood pressure, and chronic diarrhea and nausea, among other symptoms. Kennedy also told the doctor about the chronic and often acute back pain that had resulted from injuries he had incurred while commanding a badly damaged and sinking PT boat in the South Pacific in World War II. Kennedy, who had suffered bone loss and was taking more than a few hot showers a day as a kind of hydrotherapy, was almost crippled by the pain. He wasn’t wheelchair-bound, as Franklin Roosevelt had been after he contracted polio, but he needed medication just to be able to walk without crutches and to keep his pain at a low ebb. Dr. Janet Travell was then treating Kennedy’s back pain through a prescription of injections of Procaine/Novocaine. This handicap, according to Barbara Leaming, “was also difficult to hide from a public that thought of him as athletic and robust. Something as simple as bending over a lectern to read a speech caused him terrible pain. Janet Travell worked with engineers to design a reading stand that would reduce the pain.”
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However, Dr. Travell’s specialty was traditionally orthopedic. Jacobson was the miracle doctor Kennedy needed to help him regain his energy.

Kennedy also revealed that he drank not an insubstantial amount of alcohol, partly because it went with a politician’s territory of constantly having to attend social affairs. But he enjoyed drinking, too, Kennedy said. Jacobson was not a fan of alcohol himself and often weaned his patients off it. In Kennedy’s case, it would prove to be an issue that his doctor would have to address constantly.

Kennedy was also very forthcoming about the prescription drugs he was taking. He was literally living in a chemical bath of medications. There was the Phenobarbital to control his irritable bowel syndrome; the cortisone steroids for his Addison’s disease; the painkillers for his back; a series of sleeping aids; and antibiotics for various infections, including those of the urinary tract. He even took testosterone, which, combined with the effects of the methamphetamine, made Kennedy sexually ravenous. Although there was not much Jacobson could do about the Addison’s disease, he assured Kennedy that his “vitamin cocktail” could help him manage the stress, extreme fatigue, and muscle weakness in preparation for the upcoming debates. After all, as Jacobson often told his patients, the treatment of stress was one of his specialties. Given Kennedy’s medical condition, he knew the administration of a powerful stimulant might be dangerous, but at least it would give the young candidate enough energy to keep on facing the demands of the campaign head on. It was a risk Jacobson was willing to take. Not to worry, he told the candidate; he would be available to help Kennedy on a moment’s notice. It would be his pleasure. Kennedy readily agreed to anything that would help him withstand the pain and give him back his strength. He didn’t give a second thought about what was in the vial that Jacobson inserted into the needle of his syringe.