To cure male impotence, his procedure, as extravagant as it was lucrative, consisted of transplanting goat testicles to the scrotums of men (Wikipedia)
In the Midwest of the United States, just after the conquest of the West and the formation of that country as we know it today, there was a doctor who toured the towns in a dilapidated wagon. John Romulus Brinkley He promised the unthinkable: a miraculous cure for male impotence and virtually any other ailment his patients had. The doctor had a stubble and round glasses that gave him the aura of a know-it-all scientist. In each town he reached, the main street was filled with curious people waiting for the stories of men saved by his magic potions.
To cure male impotence, his procedure, as extravagant as it was lucrative, consisted of transplanting goat testicles to the scrotums of men, which, according to him, restored lost vigor. In exchange for $750—a sum that today would be equivalent to nearly $10,000—Brinkley guaranteed renewed virility and a life free of ailments. Goat glands catapulted him to fame and, for more than a decade, he accumulated an unthinkable fortune.
However, Brinkley’s claims were not supported by science, and both the validity of his method and the authenticity of his medical degree came under constant scrutiny. His career was marked by controversy, doubt and tragedy. Reports of malpractice multiplied, and throughout his life a dozen deaths resulting from his procedures were attributed to him. But none of this stopped his meteoric rise: despite the warnings of the American Medical Association (AMA)which labeled his methods as dangerous and fraudulent, Brinkley remained one of the most influential figures in popular medicine for more than a decade.
To each town he arrived, he brought the hope of miraculous cures. The men with impotence problems almost formed a line in front of the wagon in which he served and in which he carried his potions. Then, he generally used the operating room rented from a private clinic to perform the goat testicle grafts.
Brinkley said goat glands were miraculous (Wikipedia)
Brinkley was born on July 8, 1885 in Beta, North Carolina. He was the illegitimate son of a rural doctor. The shadow of illegitimacy would accompany him throughout his life, both in his family origin and in his professional training. When his father died in 1896, John, barely a teenager, was forced to become the breadwinner for his family. He alternated jobs as a telegraph operator and postman while dedicating his free hours to Bible study and home remedies. A first sign of what would be his future in the world of alternative medicine.
Eventually, Brinkley married Sally Wikea woman with whom he started a nomadic company of traveling shows. Together they organized small plays to attract crowds to whom they then sold tonics and herbal medicines of dubious effectiveness. As debts piled up, the couple sought to give their business a veneer of legitimacy, leading Brinkley to enroll in the Bennett Medical College from Chicago. However, financial problems forced him to drop out before earning his degree.
Far from becoming discouraged, Brinkley continued his path to medical stardom. After leaving Sally, he remarried and began practicing as a “men’s specialist” in Tennessee, and later as a “Doctor Electro Medic” in South Carolina. His “electric medicine,” supposedly imported from Germany, promised to improve male virility, although in reality it was nothing more than dyed water. He soon fell into bankruptcy again, which led him to serve a brief prison sentence for his debts.
In the summer of 1914, after being released by his father-in-law, Brinkley settled in Judsonia, Arkansas, where he opened a practice specializing in the treatment of women and children. There, his practice began to gain notoriety among the local population. Despite his previous failures, Brinkley was determined to fulfill his dream of becoming a doctor. He enrolled in the Eclectic Medical University of Kansas City, a disreputable institution that was later discovered to be issuing fake diplomas. Brinkley obtained her certification through a “ghost certificate,” allowing her to continue her career without completing legitimate training.
A Brinkley advertisement in the United States media (Wikipedia)
In 1916, Brinkley moved to Milford, Kansas, where he opened a 16-room clinic. For two years, he lived modestly, caring for patients suffering from the flu pandemic, and slowly gained the trust of the community. However, his real fame began when a patient, a farmer, complained of suffering from impotence. It was on this visit that Brinkley came up with the idea that would make him a millionaire man. Jokingly, Brinkley pointed to the testicles of a nearby goat and remarked to the man, “You wouldn’t have any problems if you had a couple of those male glands on you.” To Brinkley’s surprise, the farmer responded enthusiastically, “Why don’t you transplant them for me?”
From that moment on, Brinkley’s life changed forever. In 1920, he performed the first testicle transplant goat into a human being, and when the farmer’s wife gave birth to a child months later, the rumor that Brinkley’s procedure could restore fertility spread like wildfire. The “miraculous” birth of little Billy, the first baby conceived after a goat gland operation, consolidated the fame of the false doctor. Soon, men from all over the country were flocking to his clinic, willing to pay large sums in the hope of regaining their sexual potency. Also, they eagerly awaited him in their towns when Brinkley went on tour in the Midwest.
The operation, although rudimentary and scientifically unsustainable, catapulted Brinkley to national fame. The surgery simply involved sewing a goat’s testicle to a patient’s scrotum. Brinkley did not link the testicle with blood vessels, and consequently the gland did not actually interact internally with patients’ bodies, and had no real medical basis.
However, in 1922, the Los Angeles Times published an article on the cover with the headline: “New life in glands. Dr. Brinkley’s patients show improvement. Incurable diseases are cured.” This publicity led Brinkley to carry out more than 1,200 successful operations, according to his own reports, and made him a millionaire in a matter of just a few years.
Brinkley was quick to claim that goat glands not only cured impotence, but could cure almost anything. The flu and insomnia disappeared after each goat gland operation, he claimed, while the insane could see clearly in just 36 hours after the operation.
The operating room that Brinkley used for his operations (Wikipedia)
Brinkley’s stories were incredible. In one article, he described the miraculous recovery of a patient whom no asylum could help: “On the second day after having the two goat glands inserted, he spoke to me and said, ‘Doctor, could you take off the straps so I can rest comfortably? Now I am perfectly aware of everything and I feel as if I have been brought out of the grave.’”
Brinkley also advertised like no one had before. He filled the newspapers with advertisements in which he appeared holding little Billy, the first child born with a goat gland in the world.
The doctor was not only a popular surgeon; He was also a marketing expert. In 1923, he established his own radio station, KFKB (Kansas First, Kansas Best), from where he promoted his operations and offered medical consultation programs, such as his famous “Medical Question Box”, where he answered listeners’ concerns about health problems, always with an infallible recipe: his pharmaceutical products and bone transplant operations. glands.
Despite its commercial success, the American Medical Association and other public health agencies viewed Brinkley as a threat. From the beginning of his career, the WADA had warned about the dangers of his procedures and the lack of scientific evidence to support them. However, it was in 1930 when the authorities took definitive measures. He Kansas Medical Council launched an investigation that revealed the tragic truth behind Brinkley’s success: he had signed more than 42 death certificates of patients who died after undergoing his procedures.
A pharmacy sold Brinkley’s miraculous potions (Wikipedia)
As a result, on July 3, 1930, Brinkley lost his medical license, and a few months later, his radio station was closed by the Federal Radio Commission.
Although his glory days seemed to be over, Brinkley did not give up easily. He attempted to run for governor of Kansas, hoping to regain the political and legal control he needed to revalidate his license, but lost the election. He then took his radio operation across the border into Mexico, where U.S. authorities could not silence him. However, their efforts were in vain. In 1938, the journalist Morris Fishbein published an article calling him “a modern charlatan,” prompting Brinkley to sue him for defamation. He lost the case.
After the judicial defeat, an avalanche of negligence lawsuits left him bankrupt. He was convicted of mail fraud and, due to medical complications, lost a leg. Ruined and without allies, John Brinkley died on May 26, 1942 in San Antonio, Texas, at age 56, penniless and forgotten by those who once revered him as a savior. And they agreed to undergo the grafts goat testicles.
