From 1960...

The Candidates' Health

RECOVERING from his heart attack and his ileitis surgery, President Eisenhower set a precedent in the 1956 election campaign by frankly discussing the state of his health. Last week the Democrats picked up "the health issue" and were playing hard politics with it among themselves. Jack Kennedy began the intramural scrap by declaring that the presidency demands "the strength and health and vigor of ... young men." Supporters of Lyndon Johnson leaped to the conclusion that Kennedy was making a not-so-subtle allusion to L.B.J.'s 1955 heart attack. "Citizens-for-Johnson" Director John B. Connally countercharged that Kennedy secretly suffers from Addison's disease, an incurable but now controllable deficiency of adrenal secretions. And Johnson-lining India Edwards, former vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said: "Doctors have told me that [Kennedy] would not be alive were it not for cortisone."

 

The medical facts:

 

Jack Kennedy, 43, says that he did have a "partial adrenal insufficiency." He laid it to a war-born case of malaria, which itself required treatment through 1949. To supplement adrenal output, Kennedy took regular doses of cortisone from 1947 to 1951 and again from 1955 to 1958. He still takes oral doses of corticosteroids (cortisone-type medication) "frequently, when I have worked hard," although a recent test showed his adrenals to be functioning normally. Whether his is an arrested case of Addison's disease or a borderline adrenal insufficiency is unclear. In two years of almost ceaseless campaigning, Kennedy has displayed remarkable energy and none of the classic symptoms of advanced Addison's disease: chronic fatigue, weight loss, low blood pressure, anemia, or a bronzelike darkening of the skin.

 

Kennedy's earlier medical history is complex. Severe and recurring jaundice forced him to leave Princeton during his freshman year (when his health improved, he later went to Harvard). The Army rejected him because of a football injury to his back, but the Navy accepted him. The back was reinjured when a Japanese destroyer knifed through Lieut. Kennedy's PT boat in 1943. He spent most of 1944 in a Navy hospital, underwent a spinal disk operation, which was not fully successful. As a consequence, in October 1954, surgeons performed a delicate fusion of spinal disks. Slow to heal and set back by relapses that were complicated by the adrenal shortage, his condition became so grave that his family was summoned to his bedside. He had a third spinal operation the following February to remove a metal plate. Last rites were administered. But this time, after two weeks abed, recovery was rapid. Total time spent in the hospital or convalescing: seven months. Today, the only vestige of the spinal problem is that he still sleeps on a board, wears a light corset. Last week, at Kennedy's request, his two Manhattan physicians reported: "Your health is excellent."

 

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,869575,00.html