The President's Physician

Jack Kennedy saw a great many physicians over the course of his short life, but one of them, according to his brother Bobby, enabled Jack to become President of the United States. ¹ When Senator Kennedy first consulted Dr. Travell in the spring of 1955, for muscle spasms in his left lower back that radiated to his left leg and made walking prohibitive, he was questioning his ability to continue his political career. Dr. Travell injected low doses of procaine into myofascial “trigger points” of the senator's lumbar muscles, which proved effective. She also discovered that one of Kennedy's legs was shorter than the other and made heel lifts for all of his left shoes,^* to counter that additional source of stress on his back. It was Janet Travell who recommended the rocking chair (Fig. 1), which is now more famous than she. Her treatments of JFK during the 5 years that preceded his presidency were so successful that he asked her to become Personal Physician to the President—the 1st woman and one of the few civilians to hold that post.

Fig. 1 Dr. Travell (left) and Mrs. Samuel M. Burgess II, President of the George Washington University Hospital Women's Board, ca. 1966. Note that both women are seated on rocking chairs.

(Photo courtesy of University Archives, The Gelman Library, The George Washington University. Reproduced by permission of Virginia Powell Wilson and Janet Powell Pinci.)

Although Dr. Travell enjoyed her White House years well enough to stay on through the first 16 months of the Johnson administration, her real interest lay in research into the causes and treatment of myofascial pain, which she resumed upon reentering private practice. Her work in that field was at the time controversial, and even now her contributions are perhaps more widely known and appreciated by chiropractors and massage therapists than by her fellow physicians.

In this issue, we are fortunate to publish 2 articles on Dr. Travell and her work: the 1st is by her collaborator and co-author Dr. David G. Simons, who writes on her contributions to cardiology and myofascial trigger points; and the 2nd is a biographical recollection by Virginia P. Wilson, one of Dr. Travell's daughters. We believe that publication is appropriate in a cardiovascular journal, both because Dr. Travell trained as a cardiologist and because her career is of broad historical interest and is overdue for assessment. Recent revelations about the precarious state of Kennedy's health, ^1,3–6 before and during his presidency, have been drawn primarily from Dr. Travell's files on her famous patient, which are housed in the Kennedy Library (an overview can be found at www.jfklibrary.org/fa_travell_wh.html, but 120 documents have been placed under seal and none are available electronically). Coincidentally, the Gelman Library of The George Washington University has launched a major exhibition of items from its Janet G. Travell, M.D. Collection.

A few months before her death in August of 1997, Dr. Travell had to decide where to house her lifetime collection of papers. She chose George Washington University because of her long and cordial working relationship with its School of Medicine. The collection consists of 104 boxes, or 44.5 linear feet of material, dated from 1922 through 1997. It includes manuscripts, reports, correspondence, research data, articles, newspaper clippings, photographs, and a variety of items from Dr. Travell's years at the White House (1961–1965). This collection is of great value to scholars interested in the development of treatments for myofascial pain over the past 60 years, in women's history, and in recent United States political history. Some of the material will be of historical interest to cardiologists, as well. A complete “finding aid” for the Janet G. Travell, M.D. Collection can be accessed at http://www.gwu.edu/gelman/archives/collections/travell.html.

The exhibit “The President's Physician: The Life and Legacy of Dr. Janet Travell” will be on view weekdays through 30 June 2003 in the Department of Special Collections, the Gelman Library, The George Washington University, 2130 H Street NW, Washington, DC. A program is planned for the late afternoon of 27 March. For those unable to attend the actual exhibit, there will be a permanent on-line exhibit (www.gwu.edu/gelman/spec/exhibit/), in addition to a printed exhibition catalogue. For more information, contact G. David Anderson, University Archivist, at 202/994-7283.

–JEB

Figure. Sample page of the typescript, with autograph corrections, of Janet Travell's biography, Office Hours: Day and Night. Dr. Travell had begun treating Senator John Kennedy for pain in 1955 and was asked by him in 1960 to serve as White House physician, the 1st woman to hold that post.

(Reprinted by courtesy of Virginia Powell Wilson and Janet Powell Pince. From the Janet G. Travell, M.D. Papers, University Archives, The Gelman Library, The George Washington University.)