At first glance, this seems straight out of the Ripley’s Believe it or Not book.

Today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has a piece on Apple in which a Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster attributed the 4% drop in Apple stock price Tuesday in part to concerns that Mr.Jobs appeared thin.

But if you think about Apple a bit, you realize that investor concerns are not unfounded.

After all, Steve Jobs, the man credited with turning around Apple and identified closely with the company’s success in the entertainment arena, is a survivor of pancreatic cancer. So Jobs’ health is rightly a matter of investor concern.

Interestingly, at the launch of the new iPods on Tuesday Steve Jobs started off his presentation with a slide quoting Mark Twain: The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

Meanwhile, Jobs claimed in a CNBC interview that he was healthy but could stand to gain 10 or 15 pounds (Source: WSJ P. B1  9/10/2008).