The drug abuse of John F Kennedy

Why did John F Kennedy make such a hash of the Bay of Pigs and his summit meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna?

And how could the same man have dealt so competently with the Cuban Missile Crisis slightly over a year later?

The usual theory is that Kennedy gained experience and a healthy scepticism for official advice. Now a new book offers an alternative explanation.

In his riveting volume In Sickness and In Power, former Foreign Secretary and medic David Owen reviews the health and medication of leaders over the last century. The chapter on Kennedy is jaw-dropping.

Owen starts by convincingly asserting that Kennedy was much sicker than is commonly appreciated and certainly much sicker than was appreciated at the time. His Addison's disease was very debilitating and needed constant attention.

And there were other health troubles. During the Bay of Pigs fiasco Owen writes that Kennedy had:

Constant and acute diarrhoea and a recurrence of his urinary tract infection.

Central to Owen's account is the idea that the administration of drugs to Kennedy for these various ailments was out of control.

In particular, without the knowledge of his other doctors and at the same time as they were giving him other drugs, he was being tended to by Max Jacobson, a doctor known as "Dr Feelgood" because of his reputation as a provider of amphetamines and pep pills. In time Jacobson's drug treatment became almost a recreational drug for Kennedy.  Jacobson was later struck off.

Owen shows that is quite likely that Dr Feelgood, specially flown to Vienna, injected Kennedy with intravenous amphetamine just before he met Khrushchev.

Then later in the year Dr Hans Kraus took control of Kennedy's medication. He demanded total control and began using massage rather than injections to treat the President. He also got rid of Jacobson, telling Kennedy:

If I ever heard he took another shot, I'd make sure it was known. No President with his finger on the red button has any business taking stuff like that.

By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy was back on an even keel.

Owen has produced a compelling book. And even if drug use was only a part the story, it's a pretty convincing theory.