“Today I am able to announce to the world, without mincing words, that the right method has been found, that I am daily transplanting animal glands into human bodies, and that these transplanted glands continue to function as live tissue in the human body, revitalizing … the human gland.”
– Dr John Brinkley
A hand-colored photograph of John Brinkley, taken during one of his campaigns for governor by Clarisa “Cassie” V. McColloch, of McPherson. (kansasmemory.org/Kansas State Historical Society)
Bill Stitzwort lamented that he wasn’t as virile as his goats he farmed in Kansas. Across the table, Dr John Brinkley (July 8, 1885 – May 26, 1942) listened as his patient spoke. After some to and fro about Stitzwort’s sexual prowess, want for another child and livestock, it was agreed; Dr Brinkley would transplant a pair of goat testicles into his patient’s scrotum and in so doing cure the farmer’s impotency.
The operation was a huge success Well, so the doctor said in the biography he commissioned. We don’t know anything more about Stizwort, but we do know that Dr Brinkley stitched a pair of goats testicles inside another man’s scrotum and that the man’s wife gave birth to a healthy boy named Billy. Well, so said the advert for Brinkley’s cure, a procedure that as his self-funded advert put it, gave men “the ram that am with every lamb”.
Arizona Republican. (Phoenix, Ariz.), 20 Feb. 1920.
And so went Dr Brinkley’s incredible career as the man who by power of goat testicles could cure your virility, flatulence, emphysema, a number of cancers and female infertility by placing the harvested gonads by her ovaries.
To avoid any doubt as to the veracity of things, the operation was performed at Dr Brinkley’s clinic in Milford, Kansas, under local anesthetic, so allowing the patient to be sure they were getting the goods they’d paid for – they having earlier identified the goat and its testicles they felt best met their needs from a herd the doctor kept out back. Minnie Brinkley, the doctor’s wife, would snip the goat’s testicles and carry them to the operating table.
The San Diego Union and Daily Bee were among newspaper that published Brinkley’s words:
“The vast majority of people have a misconception as to the experiment I have been making. While it is true that in six cases where I have transplanted goat glands, children have been born of parents who had previously been childless from a scientific standpoint the benefits of the glands are general. I am trying to show that the introduction of goat glands in the system will restore one’s health generally. It will make old men and old women more vigorous mentally as well as physically. I realize it is hard to keep people from viewing this experiment from one angle only—but the experiment has back of it principles that are not confined solely to propagating the race.”
The operating room at The Brinkley Hospital
Dr Morris Fishbein is Listening
On November 2 1920, commercial radio began in Pittsburgh with the first broadcast of KDKA of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company.
Brinkley, who had worked in communications at Western Union and as a telegraph operator, was quick to realise the power of the new technology. He applied and was awarded a radio licence. And very soon Dr. J.R. Brinkley of Brinkley Hospitals was running KFKB (“Kansas First, Kansas Best” or sometimes “Kansas Folks Know Best”) out of Milford, Kansas.
Unable to talk all day about his impoverished childhood, his father, a poor mountain man who practiced medicine in North Carolina and served as a medic for the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, and goat testicles medicine, he recruited more presenters. There was a show presented by a blind cowboy, music from military bands, French lessons, astrological forecasts, and many country musicians were hired to entertain listeners.
Dr. and Mrs. Brinkley
As more people listened, so more people arrived at Brinkley’s clinic in search of a cure. Dr Brinkley grew rich. Milford became Brinkley town. His money paid for the sidewalks, the sewers, the electric lights, a new hospital, a bear to start a new zoo (which never materialised after he shot it when its growling became too loud for his liking) and uniforms for the Little League team, renamed the Brinkley Goats. He was named an “admiral” in the Kansas Navy
But one listener to his shows was unimpressed. Dr Morris Fishbein (July 22, 1889 – September 27, 1976), the son of immigrant Jews who became editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association and campaigner for the regulation of medical devices, was on a mission to rid the world of charlatans and quacks. As the face of the American Medical Association (founded in 1847), Fishbein wanted to stop Brinkley.
His research revealed that Dr Brinkley had scored his medical diploma from a fake school. The state of California issued an indictment against Brinkley and petitioned the authorities in Kansas to extradite the man for trial. But the Kansas state governor, Jonathan McMillan Davis (April 27, 1871 – June 27, 1943), liked the money Brinkley’s cure brought in and blocked the doctor’s arrest.
A delighted Brinkley crowed. He went on the radio and told everyone he had beaten Fishbein and all the other fools at the AMA. He created a new radio how called Medical Question Box, encouraging listeners to write in with details of their illness which the doctor read on the air and prescribed a cure for – one of his own making, naturally. These treatments were only available at a network of pharmacies that were members of the “Brinkley Pharmaceutical Association”.
Doctor’s Orders
Things changed in 1930. The Kansas City Star, which owned a radio station that competed with Brinkley’s, ran an unfavourable series of reports on him. That same year the Kansas Medical Board held a formal hearing to decide whether Brinkley’s medical licence should be revoked. The matter went to court. At the trial, Brinkley insisted that nobody had been harmed by his surgery. A representative of the Kansas Medical Association then showed the court 42 death certificates of patients who had died in Brinkley’s clinic – all signed by Brinkley.
Factor in the possible deaths of other patients who died later at home or from buying his fake cures and Brinkley might have been liable for the deaths of many more people.
But no matter. The law meant that nobody could not be tried in a criminal court for harming a patient in the course of practicing medicine. All Kansas did was to revoke Brinkley’s medical license, stating that the man “has performed an organised charlatanism … quite beyond the invention of the humble mountebank.” And the Federal Radio Commission ruled that it would not renew Brinkley’s radio licence.
A few days later, Brinkley announced that he’s going to run for governor. a political position that would enable him to appoint his own members to the medical board and thus regain his right to practice medicine in the state.
He had a radio station, a plane and the support of leading country musicians and preachers who broadcast on his station. and he had a new story to tell. On the radio, he presented himself as a martyr. He likened himself to Jesus Christ. The Kansas medical board hearing had been his Garden of Gethsemane. The audience lapped it up. At one stop on his tour, 20,000 people gathered to her him speak.
He was winning. So a few days before the election, the state’s Attorney General, who had prosecuted Brinkley before the medical board, came up with a plan to stop him. He decreed that the only ballots that had Brinkley’s name spelled exactly would be counted. This mattered because Brinkley had declared his running late and become a write-in candidate – that’s a candidate whose name does not appear on the ballot. To cast a vote for Brinkley, voters had to physically write his name on the ballot. At the final count, as many as 50,000 votes for Brinkley were thrown out for misspellings. With them, he’d have won.
Buenas Dias America!
Dr Brinkley told his radio station to an insurance company and moved to a hotel in Del Rio, Texas, just four miles from the Mexican border. He used his money to buy a mansion in the city and to set up XER radio station in Villa Acuña, Coahuila (since renamed Ciudad Acuña), Mexico.
It was a high-tech setup with a remote control line from his phone line so that he didn’t have to leave his home to preach his gospel. Unable to operate, he instead hawked his new goat serum, a cure for impotence. And his voice travelled far and wide. In Kansas, Brinkley’s transmitter could only broadcast to 5,000 watts. But in Mexico, his broadcast reached a million watts.
The musicians that Brinkley had started finding in Kansas to fill time between adverts for goat testicles were now playing to a huge audience. The talent roaster included the likes of the Carter family, Gene Autry, Hank Williams and Red Foley. Thanks to John Brinkley, country music went from regional to national and worldwide. He received letters from listeners in the Philippines.
America’s Fuhrer
High on his own celebrity and very rich, Brinkley took a holiday to Europe. Already a fan of eugenics, in Germany, Brinkley became excited by the Nazis. Back in the US he befriended other antisemites, notably Father Charles Coglin, the Catholic priest and son of Irish immigrants who drew huge crowds at rallies and broadcast his hatred of Jews to millions of Americans in his Golden Hour radio show, and Gerald B. Winrod, a Wichita preacher who blamed all of society’s troubles on an international Jewish conspiracy.
Brinkley Manor, in Del Rio, Texas.
Brinkley even redecorated his mansion, changing the tiles in his huge swimming pool to ones bearing swastikas. Anyone wondering what might have been, should know that at one point, Brinkley consulted his psychic about running for president.
Could he be stopped?
The federal government tried. It passed a law that became known as the Brinkley Act. The law made it a criminal offence to have a telephone line from your home in Texas to your station in Mexico and using it to broadcast programs in the United States.
In response, Brinkley recorded his shows and transported the tapes across the border.
Brinkley Takes The Bait
Fishbein has seen and heard enough. He realised that the best way to stop Brinkley was to appeal to the man’s air of racial superiority, invincibility and god-given righeousness. Fishbein set a trap. He wrote an article called Modern Medical Sheraldans. In it he called Brinkley a liar. Brinkley took the bait. He said article was libel and moved to sue Fishbein for a fortune.
The trial took place in Del Rio, the town that loved Brinkley. On March 22nd, 1939, Brinkley showed up in one of his many custom-built Cadillacs.
Fishbein’s defence was simple: ‘I told the truth.’ The court would not debate Fishbein’s reputation, but Brinkley’s. But Team Brinkley had a plan. They filled the courtroom with Brinkley supporters. They invited one of his happy customers to take the stand. And they start to ask him questions. At this point Fishbein’s lawyer issued an objection. He said that the witnesses were not experts, but patients. As such, they would noy say whether Brinkley’s a quack or not”. The judge agreed.
Since patients could not testify because they were not medical experts, the defence called medical experts to assess Brinkley’s claims. One by one they slam the doctor. And then comes the moment that end it all. Fishbein’s lawyer asked Brinkley to explain his process for putting together his famous elixirs. When preparing this formulas, did he measure the ingredients by weight or volume? Brinkely dithered. He blustered. The man who had once injected coloured water into his patients at $25, telling them it was Salvarsan or “electric medicine from Germany”, did not have the foggiest.
And so it was that Dr Morris Fishbein was found not guilty of libel. And John Brinkley was damned as a quack. Within two years of losing the trial, Brinkley was bankrupt. A year later he was dead.
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