The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [343]
Dr. Jacobson injected his own medical cocktail into the buttocks of his patients, talking about it as if it were no more than a laying on of hands. The treatment varied from patient to patient, but what Dr. Jacobson said he gave his patients was a mixture of hormones, vitamin B complex, vitamins A, C, D, and E, novocaine, enzymes, steroids, and amphetamines. Dr. Jacobson later claimed that he gave twenty milligrams of amphetamines to his patients. Most doctors prescribed only five milligrams for legitimate medical reasons, but Dr. Jacobson argued that his dosage was too small to be addictive and was made not toxic by its interaction with the other ingredients.
The reality is that amphetamines cause extreme psychological dependency and a craving for larger and larger amounts in order to obtain the shortlived burst of euphoria. “That dosage would have made Kennedy very energetic for three or four hours,” says Dr. Mauro Di Pasquale, a world-renowned expert on steroids. “That begs the question of how often he was given these injections—often enough to make him an addict, say at least a few times a day, or just intermittently to give him that boost?”
For his preferred patients, Dr. Jacobson mixed up batches of individualized dosages that they could inject themselves with when he was not there. Kennedy had long been adept at giving himself injections. If he did give himself the treatment, there were no markings on the vials to suggest just what he was shooting into his system or how the ingredients may have been changing. The doctor may have been particularly generous with the leader of the Free World, for whatever it was in the magical cocktail, the president stood up and pranced around the room like a Harvard quarterback ready to be called into the game.
The next morning after treating Kennedy, Dr. Jacobson returned to the White House. He was becoming a familiar face to the Secret Service agents, who saw him walking in and out of the private quarters with his black bag in his hand. Dr. Jacobson recalled that Jackie showed him a vial of Demerol that she had found in Kennedy’s bathroom. The drug is a narcotic analgesic; while it would have deadened his pain, it was nothing that the president should have been taking without medical direction. The fact that Jackie showed Dr. Jacobson a vial suggests not only that the president was injecting the drug into his own body, but that Dr. Burkley and his colleagues were justified in their fear that Dr. Travell’s promiscuous use of novocaine would drive the president to try narcotics.
Dr. Jacobson wrote in his unpublished autobiography that he told the president that this was a dangerous step he was taking. The drug was addicting and might affect his performance in the White House. If Kennedy did not throw the drug away, the doctor would no longer treat him. Dr. Jacobson’s ultimatum was doubly important, for not only was it the kind of admonishment that Kennedy rarely heard, but it surely suggested that in taking Dr. Jacobson’s own injections, the president ran no such risk. As it was, Kennedy was being treated by several doctors—Dr. Travell, Dr. Burkley, Dr. Wade, Dr. Cohen, and Dr. Jacobson—who were not all on good terms with one another and may not have informed one another about just what drugs they were administering to the president.
While Kennedy created the illusion of health, Bobby was assuming burdens of authority he might not have had if his brother had been healthy. At nine o’clock on the evening of May 9, the attorney general walked along the dark empty space of the Washington Mall. Alongside him walked Georgi Bolshakov, a gregarious intelligence agent of the Red Army posing as a Russian