When doctor Conrad Murray was charged in 2010 with involuntary manslaughter for his role in pop star Michael Jackson’s death, the case didn’t just put the spotlight on one doctor’s actions. As the Today show put it, “an entire Hollywood culture of pliant doctors and needy celebrities stood accused, too.” Murray had been giving Jackson dangerous doses of a powerful sedative, and he was ultimately found guilty.
Fast forward to October 2024, when San Diego doctor Mark Chavez pleaded guilty to a drug offense in the death of Friends star Matthew Perry. The actor had died from a fatal ketamine overdose nearly a year earlier, and Chavez now faces up to 10 years in prison. The circumstances of Perry’s untimely death are the subject of the new Peacock documentary Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy.
Chavez and Murray are two examples of what the media have described as the “Dr. Feelgoods” of Hollywood, a reference to doctors who are all too willing to prescribe (and overprescribe) powerful drugs to stars. This moniker was first used in the mid-20th century as a nickname for Max Jacobson, a physician who injected amphetamine—also known as “speed”—“into the veins of dozens of the country’s most celebrated artists, writers, politicians, and jet‐setters” without their knowledge, a 1972 New York Times exposé revealed. Jacobson’s career in the United States spanned more than three decades. And while the nickname hasn’t lost its relevance, he remains the original “Dr. Feelgood.”
Among those Jacobson treated were writer Truman Capote, baseball player Mickey Mantle, playwright Tennessee Williams, and most famously, President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. We don’t know for certain what precise mix of ingredients went into all the energy-boosting, pain-reducing concoctions he gave to each of his patients, but we do know Jacobson often included then-legal amphetamines in his treatments.
To this day, some argue that Jacobson’s injections ruined lives, caused drug addictions, and destroyed careers. Some also say his actions may have altered history. So, who was Max Jacobson, and how did he gain such notoriety before his downfall?
The Rise of Dr. Feelgood’s Career
Born in July 1900 in Fordon, Bromberg—then part of the German Empire and now in present-day Poland—Jacosbon fled Nazi Germany in 1936 and arrived in New York City. Having studied medicine in Berlin, Jacobson had an interest in the treatment of multiple sclerosis. He went on to open a medical practice on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
During the early 1940s, many of Jacobson’s patients were Broadway actors and directors who raved about the miracle shots he gave them. His injections typically included amphetamine, which wasn’t tightly controlled like it is today. The drug is known to improve moods and boost alertness. It was sold over the counter, under the brand name Benzedrine beginning in 1932, and legal for the doctor to use.
Celebrities flocked to Jacobson so he could cure their aches and pains as they faced the intense pressures of their Broadway careers. They usually didn’t know what specific drugs were entering their bodies.
“It started with some famous producers and then stars,” documentarian and former journalist Martin Kasindorf tells Biography. Kasindorf wrote and produced the 2013 film Everybody Went to Max: Remembering Dr. Feelgood, the Merlin of Kennedy’s Camelot. “Certainly by the early 1940s, around the outbreak of World War II, he had a thriving celebrity practice.”
Jacobson’s Mysterious Injections
According to Kasindorf’s documentary, Jacobson’s injections often included a mix of hormones, vitamins, novocaine, calcium, placentas from hospitals, enzymes, steroids, and of course, amphetamines. “He brewed it all up in his back-office lab, which was totally unlicensed to make, manufacture, and ship medicine,” Kasindorf says. “He just did it. And that’s what got him in professional trouble later.”
As a 1975 New York Times article about Jacobson explained, “Reactions included euphoria followed by acute depression, severe weight loss, and paranoia.” This, in turn, could lead to addiction. Still, the euphoric feeling patients experienced earned him the nickname “Miracle Max” in addition to “Dr. Feelgood.”
Jacobson, the charismatic physician he was, had a “very commanding presence. [He was] very sure of himself, [with] great self-confidence. He was reassuring, as if he was all-knowing,” Kasindorf says. He speaks from personal experience. Along with his twin brother, Kasindorf visited Jacobson from the ages of 11 to 14 for speed-less Vitamin B12 shots after being diagnosed with anemia.
Dr. Feelgood and the Kennedy Years
Today, it’s widely known that President Kennedy lived with chronic back pain and osteoporosis. He also had Addison’s Disease, a rare disorder of the adrenal glands where the body doesn’t produce enough of certain hormones. This can lead to fatigue, weight loss, and other symptoms.
In September 1960, Chuck Spalding, a political campaigner and friend of the Kennedys, connected the then-presidential candidate and the doctor. Per HistoryNet, Spalding had himself been a patient of Jacobson. The physician wrote in his unpublished autobiography that, upon meeting, he learned Kennedy felt tremendous fatigue due to the demands of the election.
With his first televised presidential debate against candidate Richard Nixon fast approaching, “Kennedy needed a rabbit out of a hat,” Bill Birnes tells Biography. Birnes co-wrote of Dr. Feelgood: The Shocking Story of the Doctor Who May Have Changed History by Treating and Drugging JFK, Marilyn, Elvis, and Other Prominent Figures (2013).
Jacobson injected the president with his mysterious concoction before the debate that month. In his autobiography, Jacobson wrote, “After his treatment, [Kennedy] told me his muscle weakness had disappeared. He felt cool, calm, and very alert.”
As the story goes, Kennedy outperformed Nixon in that debate. And once Kennedy won the election, Jacobson traveled regularly with the young president and visited the White House more than 30 times. Even when his brother Robert F. Kennedy relayed his concerns about Jacobson’s treatments, JFK famously responded, “I don’t care if it’s horse piss. It works.”
Altering History?
Some historians argue that Jacobson, who reportedly himself was a drug user, might have altered the course of major events in history, though this is nearly impossible to prove. One of the most frequently cited examples is Kennedy’s Vienna summit in June 1961 with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, which came just six weeks after Kennedy’s botched Bay of Pigs invasion. Jacobson accompanied the president and injected him shortly beforehand.
But the event didn’t go well for Kennedy. “[Khrushchev] just kind of dominated the conversation,” Kasindorf says. “Kennedy was bushwhacked.”
Some experts have said there’s not enough evidence to show that Jacobson’s shots impacted Kennedy’s performance. But presidential historian Robert Dallek once wrote, “We cannot discount the impact of the Jacobson chemicals… As the day wore on and an injection Jacobson had given him just before he met Khrushchev in the early afternoon wore off, Kennedy may have lost the emotional and physical edge initially provided by the shot.”
We also can’t disregard the experiences of other celebrities. Photographer Mark Shaw, a patient of Jacobson’s, died in his New York City apartment in 1969 at 47 years old, with his autopsy revealing his internal organs were “laden with methamphetamine residue,” the Times reported in 1972. Truman Capote once said, per the Times, that he collapsed and was hospitalized after taking Jacobson’s treatments. Mickey Mantle was reportedly injected by Jacobson during the season he failed to break Babe Ruth’s home run record. The list goes on.
The Downfall of the Original Dr. Feelgood
Like Robert F. Kennedy, the Secret Service had been suspicious of Jacobson. So was the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, which seized Jacobson’s supply from his office in the late 1960s. “The bureau charged the doctor with having failed to account for the drugs he possessed and other irregularities,” the Times later reported in 1973.
A year earlier, the newspaper had published a front-page exposé titled “Amphetamines Used by a Physician To Lift Moods of Famous Patients.” Boyce Rensberger, who authored the article, tells Biography that he visited Jacobson with another Times journalist and watched him treat some of his patients.
“He’d load up the syringe and start pulling a little of this, a little of that, from various bottles, and preparing his special concoction,” says Rensberger, who worked as a science reporter for more than four decades. “And it was all done right there in front of the patients.”
This was happening during Nixon’s “war on drugs,” which started in the 1970s and during which time amphetamine became a controlled substance. With Jacobson running, in Kasindorf’s words, “an unlicensed drug factory,” his medical license was suspended in 1975. The New York State Board of Regents found Jacobson guilty of 11 counts of unprofessional conduct largely related to the control, manufacture, labeling, and distribution of drugs, as well as one count of fraud or deceit, the Times reported.
Jacobson died four years later in 1979, but his legacy persists today. Rensberger says, “A number of other doctors have gotten the moniker of ‘Dr. Feelgood’ long after Jacobson was out of the picture.”
Jordan Friedman is a freelance writer, journalist, and content marketer based in New York City with a passion for investigative research and storytelling. His work has appeared on HISTORY, Biography.com, Smithsonian Magazine, and USA TODAY, among other publications. He is also a former education editor and reporter for U.S. News & World Report.
