WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- The first thorough examination of many of President John F. Kennedy's medical records, conducted by an independent presidential historian, found he was in far greater pain and was taking many more medications than the public knew at the time, The New York Times reported Sunday.
Newly disclosed medical files covering the last eight years of Kennedy's life, including X-rays and prescription records, show that he took painkillers, antianxiety agents, stimulants and sleeping pills, as well as hormones to keep him alive, with extra doses in times of stress, The Times said.
At times the president took as many as eight medications a day, says the historian, Robert Dallek, who consulted with a committee of three longtime Kennedy family associates, who for decades refused all requests to look at the records.
Dallek is writing a biography, "An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963," to be published next year by Little, Brown and was allowed to examine the records over two days last spring in the company of a physician, Jeffrey A. Kelman, and to make notes but not photocopies.
Their findings appear in December's "The Atlantic" magazine, and they discussed them in interviews with The New York Times, the newspaper said.
Yet for all of Kennedy's suffering, the ailments did not incapacitate him, Mr. Dallek concluded. In fact, he said, while 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, when he was a senator from Massachusetts, campaigning unsuccessfully for the 1956 Democratic vice-presidential nomination -- and quietly planning his 1960 presidential bid.
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, gamma globulin, presumably to combat 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, Dr. Kelman said.
The president had so much pain from three fractured vertebrae from osteoporosis that he could not put a sock or shoe on his left foot unaided, the records reveal. He sometimes reported waking before dawn with severe abdominal cramps.
Despite the new disclosures much of Kennedy's lifetime medical history emains sealed in private hospitals.
