Most people maintain two lingering images of President John F. Kennedy. One recalls a man who embodied tremendous youth, vigor, vibrance, intellectual acuity, and physical activity, always playing football or sailing; the second surrounds Jackie in her perfect pink suit crawling out of the back of the convertible in Dallas after Kennedy was shot in the head. These contrasting pictures reveal the dual reality of Kennedy's entire political life: that of a very sick man wrapped in images of youth, health, and vigor. In Kennedy's case, the robust image could hardly have been more divorced from reality. Ironically, although he was the youngest man ever to be elected president of the United States, he was in fact one of the sickest men to hold the office, thus exemplifying that youth often offers no protection from the ravages of illness. In reality, Kennedy's physical limitations, and his perseverance in the face of them, made him simultaneously the strongest and the most fragile of men.

The nature of Kennedy's health problems was even more complicated than Wilson's or Roosevelt's disabilities. Kennedy provides an instructive example of someone who was impaired by both illness and addiction. Three prominent issues deserve consideration in any investigation into Kennedy's life, health, and political behavior: his debilitating back problem; his Addison's disease; and, perhaps in response to the first two, his heavy reliance on medication, including steroids and amphetamines.