The images of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy are part of the collective imagination of several generations that have deeply marked the history of the second half of the twentieth century. Rivers of ink have been used to write innumerable theories on this compelling historical fact.
A few years ago the surgeon, Kenneth Salyer, who on 22 November 1963 was a young doctor on call at the Dallas hospital where JFK died shortly after arrival, speculated that the president would probably have been saved had he not worn a stiff corset that made him stay erect after the first shot, exposing him as an easy target to the second, fatal bullet.
But why was Kennedy wearing a corset? Historians in the following years have brought to the fore the numerous pathologies suffered by JFK, including the chronic back pain for which he used the corset to control the pain and was wearing at the time of his death.
A study published in the Postgraduate Medical Journal, and carried out by the universities of Florence, Turin and East Anglia-Norwich now reconstructs the clinical history, through the study of unpublished archival material made available by the Kennedy family in 2001. This clinical history of the American politician was kept hidden for many years. It started in his early adolescence with gastrointestinal disorders, hypothyroidism, and bone pain (“President John F Kennedy's medical history: coeliac disease and autoimmune polyglandular syndrome type 2 "doi:10.1136 / postgradmedj-2020-137722). Among the authors Donatella Lippi, professor of History of Medicine at the Departments of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, and the allergist-immunologist Donatella Macchia, of the Florentine hospital “San Giovanni di Dio”.
"The documents, which date from 1955 to 1963, have allowed us to reconstruct the numerous hospital admissions, both in the USA and in Europe, the diagnostic and therapeutic approaches of the time, and, above all, have allowed us to speculate that Kennedy suffered from coeliac disease associated with Addison's disease and autoimmune polyglandular type 2 syndrome," explain Lippi and Macchia.
This theory would explain the problems faced by the president since he was a teenager, such as gastrointestinal symptoms, weight and growth problems, and fatigue. All his diseases contrast with the public image of a man full of energy, a combatant during the Second World War who was awarded the Purple Heart for dragging a badly injured crewman through the sea, despite a back injury. He captained a torpedo-boat which had been rammed by a Japanese destroyer.
Coeliac disease is a chronic inflammatory disease of the small intestine caused by the ingestion of gluten in genetically predisposed subjects. The study suggests that Kennedy’s genetic risk probably derived from his Irish origins. The migration of the Irish also caused the diffusion in the USA of the immunogenetic characteristics typical of coeliac disease; JFK’s father also suffered from many symptoms attributable to this disorder.
