Two weeks after John R. Brinkley arrived in Milford, Kansas, a farmer came to the office and He asked him to help him with his virility problems..
Brinkley explained to him that there was no treatment for his problem and, just before sending him away, he joked that since he didn’t want him to give him the testicles of a goat, there weren’t many other options.
The farmer He looked at him and said “why not?”.
What is a doctor like you doing in a town like this?
Brinkley was not a medical genius, nor was he even someone well versed in the subject. His only demonstrable experience was a few years selling remedies from town to town, a couple of years as a doctor in a meat packing plant, and two months in a clinic in South Carolina from which he was arrested for paying with false checks and practicing without a license.
He took advantage of the prison to meet people who could “provide” him with one, in fact.
But he soon discovered that, with his history, he was of little use. The good people of Milford, a tiny town of 200 people in northern Geary County, couldn’t get fancy either: They needed a doctor and they needed one fast, so they didn’t ask any more questions.
Brinkley opened a clinic, paid his employees good salaries, and did a commendable job caring for Spanish flu patients. It was then, under that aura of respectability and success, that he remembered the farmer’s comment. “Why not?”.
The goat testicle industry
Here the versions differ. According to the biography that Brinkley had written, the patient begged the doctor to perform the operation and, in fact, paid him $150 at that time for it. According to the patient’s son, who told the Kansas City Star, the person who paid (“a good amount”) was Brinkley.
Be that as it may, it seems that the operation took place secretly (at night and without further publicity). Not only that: according to the story, the operation was a success, the farmer regained sexual vigor and, a month later, took his wife to have a goat ovary transplanted. From there, pay attention to the information, a child would be born.
It’s true? It doesn’t look good, but it doesn’t matter: the story spread like wildfire and, in a very short time, Brinkley had built an entire business emporium at $750 per operation.
As far as we know, it was limited to introducing the goat gonads into the testicular sac or into the abdomen (in the case of “ovary transplants”). Hence it is not surprising that many of his patients suffered serious infections and “an unknown number” died. He was denounced for ‘intentional homicide’ more than a dozen times in the 1930s.
It didn’t matter either: in the following years, Brinkley became a regular in the press and the technique began to be promoted as the cure for up to 27 diseases. A star was born.
America’s doctor
In fact, he quickly became famous in California and, according to some testimonies, Milford received visits from several renowned stars. Although, honestly, Brinkley’s aggressive marketing strategies (who went so far as to create a radio station for this purpose) make everything a bit uncertain.
What we do know is that Brinkley’s fortune continued to grow and, in a very short time, he became a national medical figure. It was no wonder: “Today I can announce to the world, without beating around the bush, that the correct method has been found, that I am daily transplanting animal glands into human bodies, and that these transplanted glands continue to function as living tissue in the human body, revitalizing… the human gland,” explained the same character in a 1922 book.
The clinic (or clinics) was quickly joined by a network of pharmacies that served the remedies that Brinkley promoted on his two daily radio programs. He was on top of the world and then the problems began.
The media began to denounce his strange medical resume and unsatisfied cases rose to the surface. California even asked to arrest him, but Kansas refused to do so (let alone “extradite” him). In his adopted state they were convinced that he was the victim of a plot.
So much so that he ran for Governor and “won.” The problem was that, having joined the electoral race at the last minute, his name was not on the ballots and those who wanted to vote for him had to write his name correctly. Some 50,000 votes were considered invalid due to spelling mistakes.
Everything began to get complicated and in 1941, mired in lawsuits and problems, he declared bankruptcy. A year later, almost destitute and with one leg less due to circulation problems, he died. He was 56 years old and beneath his bizarre goat-gland story is a man ahead of his time: a man who found and destroyed the boundaries between media and medicine. He wouldn’t be the last to do so.
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