Dr. Feelgood: Max Jacobson and the Speed Shots That Reached the Oval Office
In September 1960, a young senator from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy was preparing for what would become one of the most consequential moments of the twentieth century: the first televised presidential debate. He had lost his voice. His back pain was severe. A friend introduced him to a German-born New York physician named Max Jacobson, who administered an injection and sent Kennedy to the debate. Kennedy demolished Nixon in the exchange. His voice was clear. His posture was straight. His energy was undeniable. He later told Robert Kennedy, who had expressed concern about what was being injected, that he did not care if it was horse urine: it worked.
What it was, in fact, was a mixture containing amphetamines, steroids, animal hormones, bone marrow, enzymes, human placenta, and multivitamins, brewed in an unlicensed back-office laboratory on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Jacobson administered it to a roster of celebrities, politicians, socialites, and anyone else who could afford his practice, often many times per week. He called them vitamin shots. He did not tell patients they contained amphetamines. He had no legal authority to manufacture the compounds he was injecting. His operation, in the language a later investigation would use, was an unlicensed drug factory.
The Patient List and the Method
Jacobson was born in 1900 in the German Empire, trained in medicine at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, and fled Nazi Germany in 1936 after Hitler came to power. He built a practice in New York City catering initially to artists, musicians, and entertainers, then expanding into the political and celebrity world through referrals and a growing reputation for making people feel extraordinary on demand. His patient list, eventually documented by a New York Times investigation in 1972, included Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Truman Capote, Marlene Dietrich, Leonard Bernstein, Tennessee Williams, Eddie Fisher, Mickey Mantle, and dozens of others whose names occupied the overlapping categories of very famous and very stressed.
The shots worked in the immediate term in the way that high-dose amphetamines work: they produced energy, confidence, and a temporary sense of enhanced capacity. The crashes, when they came, and the addiction that developed in long-term patients, were consequences that Jacobson managed by providing more shots. Some patients came to see him multiple times per week. Kennedy visited the White House more than thirty times in 1961 and 1962. Jackie Kennedy received injections for migraines and depression. When Kennedy wanted Jacobson and did not want the visit documented, a White House staffer called the physician’s office using the code name “Mrs. Dunn.”
The Vienna Summit
The most historically significant episode in Jacobson’s career involved the Vienna summit of June 1961, where Kennedy met Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev six weeks after the Bay of Pigs disaster. Kennedy’s back was causing him severe pain and his confidence was shaken by the Cuba failure. He summoned Jacobson, who injected him before the meetings began. As the summit progressed and the shot’s effects diminished, Kennedy was injected again. And again. Khrushchev, who arrived late and proceeded to dominate the exchanges, returned to Moscow reportedly convinced that Kennedy was weak and could be pressured. Some historians have drawn a direct connection between Jacobson’s chemical management of the president and Kennedy’s performance in Vienna. Others dispute the causal link. What is not in dispute is that the President of the United States was being injected with amphetamines by an unlicensed drug manufacturer between sessions of a Cold War summit.
The Investigation and the Reckoning
The New York Times published its exposé of Jacobson’s practice in December 1972. The newspaper reported that his office ordered 80 grams of amphetamine per month, enough for more than 100 strong doses per day. An investigation found that a substantial portion of the amphetamines he purchased was unaccounted for. The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs had been watching him since the late 1960s. In 1969, one of his patients, former presidential photographer Mark Shaw, had died of acute amphetamine poisoning at age forty-seven; track marks covered his arms and his apartment contained vials of Jacobson’s preparations.
The New York State Board of Regents charged Jacobson with 48 counts of unprofessional conduct. In 1975, they revoked his medical licence, finding him guilty of 11 counts primarily relating to the unlicensed manufacture and distribution of controlled substances, plus one count of fraud. He applied to have his licence restored in 1979 and was denied. He died four months later, at seventy-nine, never having regained it.
The Medical and Legal Framework
Jacobson’s case sits at the intersection of several of the categories this series addresses. As a matter of standard of care, his practice represented a catastrophic failure: he was administering powerful stimulants and habit-forming substances to patients without disclosing what they were receiving, manufacturing pharmaceutical compounds in an unlicensed facility, and treating addiction to his own injections with more injections. His patients were not informed participants in a treatment plan; they were, in most cases, people who had been told they were receiving vitamins and who were developing amphetamine dependence without knowing it.
The regulatory context matters here. In the 1940s and 1950s, amphetamines were not scheduled controlled substances. They were widely used in medicine and their addictive potential was not formally recognised in regulatory law. As Nixon’s Controlled Substances Act of 1970 imposed stricter controls, Jacobson’s operation became progressively more legally exposed. What he had been doing for thirty years in a relatively permissive regulatory environment became prosecutable as the law changed around him. The investigation and licence revocation were, in part, the belated application of a new regulatory framework to an old practice.
His most famous patient, in a statement that has been quoted in every account of his career, declined to think too carefully about any of this. It worked. That was enough.
TL;DR: Key Facts and Why This Case Matters
Who was Max Jacobson?
Max Jacobson (1900–1979) was a German-born New York physician who built a celebrity medical practice centered on injections he described as vitamin formulas that in fact contained amphetamines, steroids, animal hormones, and other compounds. His patients included President John F. Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and dozens of other prominent figures. He manufactured his injectable compounds in an unlicensed back-office laboratory. His medical licence was revoked by New York State in 1975 for unprofessional conduct relating to the manufacture and distribution of controlled substances.
What was the connection to the Kennedy presidency?
Jacobson was a frequent presence in the Kennedy White House, visiting more than thirty times in 1961 and 1962 and treating both the President and First Lady. He accompanied Kennedy to the 1961 Vienna summit with Khrushchev, administering injections before and during the meetings. Kennedy’s White House physicians eventually recognised the harm being done and convinced the President to discontinue treatment with Jacobson. His involvement in the presidency was not publicly known until the New York Times investigation of 1972.
How was he exposed?
The New York Times published a front-page exposé in December 1972 documenting his amphetamine orders and his administration of undisclosed substances to patients. The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs had been investigating him for several years. A patient’s death from acute amphetamine poisoning in 1969 had drawn regulatory attention. The New York State Board of Regents revoked his licence in 1975 after finding him guilty of 11 counts of unprofessional conduct.
Why does this case matter?
Jacobson’s practice illustrates what happens when the medical authority to administer injections is combined with the willingness to provide what wealthy and powerful patients want without disclosing what is being given to them. His patients consented to treatment but not to amphetamine administration; their famous and effective response to his shots was, in part, their body’s response to stimulants they did not know they were receiving. The case also illustrates the time lag between harm being done and regulatory response catching up with it, and the degree to which that lag can be extended when the patients being harmed are also the most powerful people in the country.
