THE CANDIDATES' HEALTH

RECOVERING from his heart attack and his ileitis surgery, President Eisenhower set a precedent in the 1956 election campaign by frankly discussing the state of his health. Last week the Democrats picked up "the health issue" and were playing hard politics with it among themselves. Jack Kennedy began the intramural scrap by declaring that the presidency demands "the strength and health and vigor of ... young men." Supporters of Lyndon Johnson leaped to the conclusion that Kennedy was making a not-so-subtle allusion to L.B.J.'s 1955 heart attack. "Citizens-for-Johnson" Director John B. Connally countercharged that Kennedy secretly suffers from Addison's disease, an incurable but now controllable deficiency of adrenal secretions. And Johnson-lining India Edwards, former vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said: "Doctors have told me that [Kennedy] would not be alive were it not for cortisone."

The medical facts:

Jack Kennedy, 43, says that he did have a "partial adrenal insufficiency." He laid it to a war-born case of malaria, which itself required treatment through 1949. To supplement adrenal output, Kennedy took regular doses of cortisone from 1947 to 1951 and again from 1955 to 1958. He still takes oral doses of corticosteroids (cortisone-type medication) "frequently, when I have worked hard," although a recent test showed his adrenals to be functioning normally. Whether his is an arrested case of Addison's disease or a borderline adrenal insufficiency is unclear. In two years of almost ceaseless campaigning, Kennedy has displayed remarkable energy and none of the classic symptoms of advanced Addison's disease: chronic fatigue, weight loss, low blood pressure, anemia, or a bronzelike darkening of the skin.

Kennedy's earlier medical history is complex. Severe and recurring jaundice forced him to leave Princeton during his freshman year (when his health improved, he later went to Harvard). The Army rejected him because of a football injury to his back, but the Navy accepted him. The back was reinjured when a Japanese destroyer knifed through Lieut. Kennedy's PT boat in 1943. He spent most of 1944 in a Navy hospital, underwent a spinal disk operation, which was not fully successful. As a consequence, in October 1954, surgeons performed a delicate fusion of spinal disks. Slow to heal and set back by relapses that were complicated by the adrenal shortage, his condition became so grave that his family was summoned to his bedside. He had a third spinal operation the following February to remove a metal plate. Last rites were administered. But this time, after two weeks abed, recovery was rapid. Total time spent in the hospital or convalescing: seven months. Today, the only vestige of the spinal problem is that he still sleeps on a board, wears a light corset. Last week, at Kennedy's request, his two Manhattan physicians reported: "Your health is excellent."

Lyndon Johnson, 51. readily admits that his 1955 coronary came within an ace of being fatal. While medical bulletins called it "moderately severe," Johnson now insists that it was "moderate"--though it required six months of convalescence. Johnson has forsaken cigarettes (he had been a three-pack-a-day man) and cut his weight from 226 to 202 (his doctor wants him to shed another twelve pounds). He likes to pull out of his pocket a card-sized, celluloid-encased copy of his last (November) electrocardiogram, which his doctors interpret as normal. His blood pressure, at 115 over 75 as of last May, was on the low side for a man of his age; his pulse was 78. He follows no post-coronary regimen, takes no anticoagulants, rarely naps, drives himself brutally. Says his physician (and longtime friend), Dr. James Cain of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.: "He at least should slow down and live a 48-hour day instead of a 72-hour one."

Stuart Symington, 59, developed hypertension during World War II (1943 blood pressure reading: 175 over 110). He probably aggravated the condition by overworking as president of Emerson Electric Manufacturing Co., which had rush orders for gun turrets. He usually slept at the office, sometimes got up at 3 a.m. to work. In 1945 he began to develop headaches; steadily they grew worse, prevented him from sleeping. In 1947 he underwent a "sympathectomy"--the severing of some sympathetic nerves near the spine. Chances then for full success: 33%. He recovered so quickly (three months) and fully that his case has become something of a medical classic. His blood pressure has been normal ever since (currently: 125 over 80). The headaches are gone. He follows no special diet. His only medication is an occasional sleeping pill. His health, says Dr. Samuel Grant of St. Louis, is "excellent."

Results of Vice President Richard Nixon's most recent physical exam, taken last April at Walter Reed Hospital: Chest X ray, electrocardiogram and blood count normal; blood pressure, which has always been normal, was 108 over 76, pulse 72. Nixon's worst apparent ailments are hay fever and an allergy to wool.

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