February 7, 2025 • 38 mins
Cautionary Conversation: In the 1920s, a conman convinced America that goat testicles were the secret to male virility. Tim Harford and Dr Kate Lister (Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society) dive into the bizarre and grisly tale of "Doctor" John Brinkley. This snake oil salesman mobilised the power of radio marketing to build an empire on goat gland transplants and other quack "cures". And Brinkley might have got away with it, were it not for his nemesis: the tenacious Dr. Morris Fishbein.
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For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Milford, Kansas, nineteen seventeen, a forty six year old
farmer walks into the local drug store and bashfully asks
the town's young doctor if you can talk to him
about a rather delicate matter. Although John Romulus Brinkley is
(00:36):
a newcomer to the rural Kansas town, he's proven himself
by helping the locals through a recent flu epidemic. Sensing
the man's embarrassment, the doctor ushers him into a back room.
The problem is, the man explains, hesitatingly, he's lacking in pep,
(00:56):
his attires are flat. In short, he can't get it up.
He and his wife long for a child to complete
their family. Can The doctor help explains that he's tried
treating the sexually weak with serums and tinctures and even electricity,
(01:17):
but nothing has worked. Then, remembering his time working at
an abattoir, Brinkley jokes, you wouldn't have any trouble if
you had a pair of those buck glands in you. Well,
why don't you put him in? Asks the farmer. Brinkley
will later say that he felt seconded by the idea
and tried to halt the conversation by explaining the grave
(01:40):
health risks, but the farmer is desperate to father a
child and willing to give anything a go I don't
have a goat, the doctor protests, I do, the farmer replies,
and so late one night, the farmer, along with his
billy goat, pays a visit to the doctor's office for
(02:00):
a testicle transplant. Two weeks later, the farmer makes another
late night visit to the doctor's office, this time with
a spring in his step and a check for one
hundred and fifty dollars equivalent to thousands of dollars today.
He is delighted with his goat gland implants and has
been telling his friends. Soon more men are making late
(02:26):
night visits to the Milford drug store. Dr Brinkley needs
bigger premises and a barn for the goats. Patients will
pick out the beasts whose testicles they want implanted into
their own. Men will come from all over America seeking treatment.
Brinkley travels too, setting up temporary clinics across America and
(02:47):
even taking his treatments abroad. Newspapers report on the touring
goat gland doctor, and the man himself discovers that the
cutting edge technology of radio can bring him even more patients,
so many he'll have to build a proper road between
Milford Railway Station and his hospital. A man is as
(03:10):
old as his glands, and his glands are as old
as his sex glands, Brinkley tells his patients. So eager
are they to feel the effects of revitalized sex clans,
that few stopped to ponder the medical credentials of the
charming Dr Brinkley. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to
(03:32):
Cautionary Tales. Dr John Romulus Brinkley was a showman, a
(04:02):
great self publicist, and an unreliable narrator. The story about
the farmer, for example, comes from Brinkley himself, and not
everything he said was true, In particular, not everything he
said about his own medical qualifications. To guide us through
the fantastical claims of Dr John R. Brinkley and his
(04:23):
no less fantastical life is doctor Kate Lister, host of
one of my favorite podcasts, Betwixt the Sheets, the History
of Sex, scandal and Society. Kate, I am a huge fan.
Welcome to Cautionary Tales.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Well, thank you very much for having me on. I'm
always happy to talk about goat glands.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
I mean with the crossover between betwixt the Sheets and
cautionary Tales, is it's not too hard to find?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
No, this has been a long time coming, hasn't it?
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Really? No pun intended, but yes, it really has, it
really has. I am very, very keen to hear more
about doctor Brinkley, if you will pardon the pun. His
story is nuts.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
He was a fucking lunatic, That's who he was.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
So I think we already gathered that, but give us
the backstory. So before we get into these unusual treatments,
what was his early life like with was there any
sign of this interest in goat lands?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
What we know about him is gathered from his own
testimony and testimony of people he knew him, and various
historical records. But you've got to take everything with a
pinch assault when it comes to Brinkley, because he was
the master of spin. He appears to have been born
in Carolina only a decade after the Civil War had ended,
so you sort of have to factor that into it.
(05:40):
It was the bloodiest conflict America had ever seen, so
it's a post war world. Everyone's kind of walking around
like what on earth was that he's born? He grows
up quite poor. His parents die when he's young, and
he's raised by and an uncle, and he gets married
in his twenties. At some point he works in an avatar,
(06:01):
which is where we think he first saw a goat
and went, oh, I'll store that away for future.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, I could use that.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yes, For some reason, he thought that a goat was
the most hygienic animal. That's he first read flag that one,
isn't it.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I have all sorts of thoughts about goats, but hygienic
is not the one that doesn't leap to mind of it.
Maybe that's just my own ignorance.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Maybe that's just our goat prejudice. But anyway, he thought
that they were fantastic. He gets married to his first wife,
a woman called Sally Wick, and they go on the
road as this kind of traveling medicine act together. So
you've already got the start of this combining of quack
medicine and showmanship. So they would go to rural towns
(06:43):
and sort of put on a big show for the
local folks and then flog them well snake oil really
just just nonsense and rubbish, but they were pretty good
at it.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
As a famous economics paper about the history of the
market for snake oil, and it grew hugely during the
period we're discussing, so the late eighteen hundreds and then
the first half of the twentieth century, huge market, and
a lot of it involved circuses, So you had to
get a crowd in order to sell them whatever it
was that you were selling them, and circus is a
(07:15):
good way to attract attention.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
It is completely mad. I mean, would you take medical
advice from a clown at a circus?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Nothing against clowns, but that wouldn't be my first board
of call. But I guess when we think about the
demand for what we might call unproven treatments today being
that's true. So on the TikTok on YouTube, and again
it's attention. You've got an influencer, somebody who you're paying
attention to because they're doing interesting things, and then suddenly
(07:41):
they're trying to sell you their latest goop or creams
or pills and not so different.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
But if he'd been around today, I think he would
have been on TikTok, would Brinkley. But he was traveling
around towns, he's doing his act, he's selling nonsense, and
then at some point he tries to settle down in Chicago,
and he must have had a thought along the way
of like, I'm not really a doctor.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Yeah, well, okay, spoiler, he's not a doctor.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Something must have occurred to like, I'm treating all these
people and I'm not a medical person.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So he had no medical qualification?
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Can do attitude? Tim? Is what he had? He had?
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Did he claim to be a doctor or did he
have any sort of qualifications at all?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Not at this point, and the qualifications that he does
get are best described as gubious. He went to study
at the Chicago Bennett Medical School. Eclectic medicine was just
sort of the study of botany, herbal cures and a
bit of physiotherapy as well, So it's already a little
bit okay, and it's not an accredited college that he's
(08:45):
studying at, and he doesn't even manage to finish it
because he can't pay the tuition fees. At this point,
he seems to be working a lot of different jobs
to try and pay these fees, and he can't, so
he drops out. And then eventually he goes to the
Kansas City Eclectic Medical School, which is again is a
nonsense it's just a front. They were known as diploma mills,
and he just buys a diploma in the same way
(09:05):
that occasionally Charlatan's get exposed today because they've bought a
PhD online.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Okay, so he's got a fig leaf of a qualification,
but he hasn't any got any serious training. And then
he ends up in Milford, Kansas. How did he end
up there from Chicago?
Speaker 2 (09:20):
He ditches his wife by the way in between these
two points, and his children, he just leaves them and
he takes up with another woman called Minnie, who he
bigamously marries. And at this point he's trying to run
a kind of a medical center in Chicago where he's
basically injecting men with colored water and telling them that
this is good for their manly vigor. And the authorities
(09:43):
get wise to it, and so he needs to get
out there quick smart. And there's an advert for the
town of Milford where they need a physician. So he
thinks that will do me and him and Minnie pack
up their spotted handkerchief and head to Kansas.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, and then yeah, flu hits and he tends people.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
He was really popular.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I mean, aside manner will get you along well. And
with flu. I mean at the time, there's no flu vaccine.
I guess there's no treatment, so you just kind of
like be nice to people and.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Be nice to people.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, But he was really popular when he first arrives
because he's this new doctor. Nobody's questioning that he calls
himself a doctor. It's a small rual town. There's a
few hundred people, and they're just thrilled to have a doctor.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
And then somehow he makes this leap from eclectic medicine,
so basically colored water and some herbs and spices, and
I mean that's pretty ordinary. It's a lot of people
doing that at this point in history. He leaps into
the goat gland game. Yeah. I know that there are
different accounts of the first operation, but we know that
he did, in fact in plant goatlands. So what where
(10:52):
would I really I'm going to regret asking this. Where
did he put them?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Well, he put them into the testicles, into the scrotums
of men, and there are descriptions of the surgery that
he did.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Scrotums being stretchedy there's room for four testicles rather than two.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
That's you've pretty much got it. So he had this
idea that you had to use the goat's gland within
twenty minutes of severing it. So he would basically castraight
the goats, cut out the gland from the testicle, put
it in salted water to keep it at room temperature,
and then rush it into the other room where he
would have numbed up his victims scrotum with local anesthetic,
(11:31):
and then with two incisions he would put the entire
gland just under the surface of the skin. And he
said that he was doing things like joining up blood
vessels and ensuring oxygen to play. He wasn't doing any
of that. He's just jamming a bullock in and then
he stitches it up. That's what he was doing. I
can't for you, but don't you know what. He didn't
(11:54):
come up with this in a vacuum. This was the
time of very very early hormone treatment. And I say
early in the fact that they discovered what hormones were.
And he wasn't the only mad person grafting testicles into
other testicles. There was an American Russian physician called Serge
Voronov who at least was medically qualified, right, and he
(12:15):
was doing it with monkey to worse. I don't know.
I don't know, but you could do.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
The thinking is part of the story, actually, which is
that you've got these quacks, but the mainstream of medical
practice is not necessarily any better. It doesn't necessarily have
any more evidence. They've just got more authority.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
And it made sense to them in a way of like, right,
we've discovered that testosterone is important for men and it
makes them feel peppy, and we've discovered it's made in testicles.
So if we take a testicle and we put it
in another testicle, see how it's fallen apart quite quickly.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Now.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
But I was like, I was with you right up
until that.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
It feels like spinal tap. Four testicles for test is
more than two.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
So that was the theory behind it. So you've got
serge Varanov doing it with monkey glands. Apparently he wasn't
in certain the entire glands. He was cutting slivers off
and then stitching it up inside men's scrota. He at
least was medically trained and had some gloss of pseudoscience
with it. Brinkley had nothing. He just had a scalpel
(13:18):
and a goat.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And the thing that I find most astonishing about this
is that a load of men seemed really keen to
have this done. It was hugely popular around the block.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
It was hugely popular. The gland therapy, as it was
called at the time, was really big in the twenties
and thirties. You could even buy like rejuvenating face cream
that claimed it was made from glands. It was like
the thing because it was like a pseudo hormone treatment.
The absolute apex of it was having actual testicles. So
(13:49):
apparently the first person that came to Brinkley and when
would you please put a goat testicle inside mine? And
he went, oh, I'll have to have a think about
that eventually, when yeah, are right. So he said that
he wanted to do this because he was impotent in
his wife want to get pregnant, and lo and behold,
his wife becomes pregnant, the baby is born. They call
him Billy, of course they do, and it's hailed as
(14:11):
the first goat gland baby. Because if there's one thing
Brinkley is amazing at its self publicity. I've got in
front of me a copy of his advertisement for Billy,
the first goat gland.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Oh wow, baby.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
So if I shared that well.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I'm looking at a cute baby. It doesn't look at
all like a goat, does it. I mean a toddler,
I guess, other than a baby, but it looks about one.
But yes, Kansas surgeon uses goat glands to cure sterility.
First goat gland baby, Dr John R. Brinkley and Billy amazing.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
So he uses this as an opportunity to launch this
incredible treatment. This young boy, Billy is used as the
definitive proof and it's pedaled as this cure. It'll get
rid of impotence, it will pep you up, it'll rejuvenate
your sex life. And he was charging people. Well, it's
about seven hundred and fifty dollars, but in today's money,
that's well over ten grand.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Off the top of my head, I would say that's
probably a year's income, depends exactly how you make that.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Just show how desperate people were for this treatment though.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, and people today spend a great deal for fertility treatment.
You know, it's enormously important.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Of course, just cast your mind back to when viagra
was launched.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Yeah, people lost.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Their minds with it, didn't it. There was reports of
doctors having to stamp prescriptions. With a rubber stamp because
the hand was cramping from signing so many of them.
So that's how popular viagra was. This was their viagra, Yes,
and they really thought that it was going to work.
So he is cues around the block, and not just
from the local community. There was Chinese patients who came
to see him that had been traveling around the world
(15:42):
and thought they would just stop off in Kansas to
have goat testicles put inside themselves, and it becomes this
huge media sensation.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
This is one of the reasons why nerds like me
are very keen on randomized trials, because people are able
to convince themselves that all sorts of things work. Impotence
is sometimes just in your head. Yeah, Sometimes it's got
a physical cause. Sometimes you're overthinking it.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
And I can well imagine that this guy went home
from his goatland operation full of confidence and suddenly he
he could get it up.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
So when they look at placebo effect, it's more effective
if the person a ministering the treatment looks like a
doctor has a white coatconn dot cells doctor. If there's
some level of surgical intervention, we're more inclined to believe.
And this has got all of the above, plus when
they go home they actually do have a lump in
their scrotum that is a coach testical. So I mean,
(16:37):
I am unaware if there is any medical benefit whatsoever
to do in this. I'm going to go out on
a limb and say.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
No, Kate, you can't argue with results. Baby Billy was born.
Baby Billy, the first goatland baby. Customers are happy. I
can't imagine that anything is going to go wrong, but
we'll find out after the break. You are listening to
Cautionary Tales with me Tim Harford with my special guest,
(17:04):
doctor Kate Lister of the brilliant Betwixt the Sheets podcast,
And so after the break we will hear the next
twist in the story about how the goat gland doctor
became a radio star. Welcome back to Cautionary Tales with me,
(17:30):
Tim Harford and the inimitable doctor Kate Lister. So, Kate,
we were one hundred years ago, the early nineteen twenties.
At this point, just how big was Brinkley's goat gland
transplant operation.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
It was big, and it was growing all the time
because the more he did it, the more he self publicized.
The more people wanted to come and see him, so
it becomes this beast that's feeding on itself. And he
would do things like get famous newspaper editors to come
and have a transplant, and they would then report on
(18:05):
their progress. Some guy from the La Times, Henry Chandler,
came down, and I know, I know that's that's commitment
to journalists.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
I've med a couple of newspapers. I'm not sure they'd.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Go for the more testicons, but he would do things
like that, and then he would and then so then
he's got major newspapers writing about him and his absolute
true degra is. He leapt into radio and he utilized
that in such a powerful way. He set up his
own radio station and they called it KFKB.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Kansas First Kansas.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Kansas First, Kansas Best.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
But it's very much it's the TikTok of the nineteen twenty.
This is the new cutting edge way of communicating.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
And it really was cutting edge as well. And he
would have local acts and local music groups come on
and do their little bit, like local choirs would come
on and sing. But as well, he had his own
segment twice daily where he would dispense medical advice, which
you're into very dubious territory here. Again, people from all
(19:11):
over the country would write in about their medical complaints.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
All over the country. I thought it was a local
radio station.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
It had a really big reach. It it wasn't listened
to just in Kansas. Is that the power of this
thing was enormous. I think at one point it was
the biggest radio station in the country, the most popular
and most listened to radio show.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
So he's a huge success. Massive that sort of success
must start to attract screutiny.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Well it does. It's not local radio, so other people
are listening in, and you've got a situation where Brinkley
is reading out random people's medical complaints, diagnosing them live
on the air, and then prescribing a treatment that only
his pharmacy could supply. Oneing is going off there. But
it was again massively, massively popular. But you can imagine
(20:01):
other doctors, real doctors with actual credentials, listening into this
and going.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Hang on a minute, hang on a minute.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Just give me a second. So he's getting way, way,
way too big for his boots. So he's making loads
of money, and his nemesis was an actual proper doctor
Maurice Fishbeine, who was a member of the American Medical Association,
and he was hell bent on exposing quacks and charlatans,
of which, as we've already said, there were many, and
(20:29):
this was his life's work. So he was on to
Brinkley pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And he didn't hold back, did he.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
He did not, He did not.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Got one quote in front of me says he described
Brinkley as a charlatan of the rankest sort, whose radio
station was being used to victimize people and to enrich himself,
which I don't know seems fair enough.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
All true, that's exactly what was happening. But you've got
to remember that Brinkley had managed to cultivate this huge
popularity in the local community and well in the wider
community as well. So to begin with Maurice Fishbeine, there's
this sort of lone voice, like all you mean trying
to take away our young successful doctor. And of course
(21:12):
the Milford residents love it because it's bringing loads of
money to the town. It's bringing loads of business into
the town.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
They don't want to challenge, they don't want to challenge.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Shut up, shut up.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
I mean I found this when Cautionary Tails did the
story of the Radium Dial Company and these poor young
women who were giving themselves radium poisoning working painting this
radioactive paint on watchfaces and other things. One of the
problems they faced was that not only did the doctors
not take them seriously, and not only did the company
(21:42):
deny everything, but their local community ostracized them. Yeah, because
they were like, you are going to shut down this factory.
It's the nineteen thirties, it's a tough time economically. You're
going to destroy everyone's jobs just because you're moaning about
the fact that your jaws falling off or something. They
were so lonely because the local community would not back
them against the Radium Dial Company. And it seems like
(22:06):
we've got a similar thing going on here with Brinkley
that yeah, okay, fine, maybe the goat glands work, maybe
they don't, but this is jobs, this is.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Jobs, this is income. And it's also put Milford on
the map. Great the capital, isn't it fabulous? And there
are loads of people out there really think that he's
helped them. There are many others that did not. He
was sued at least twelve times in the nineteen thirties
because unsurprisingly, these operations were not the success. He's not
(22:34):
going to give the testimonials of the people who wander
back in and going scrotum's gone purple. There were people
having infections, there were people that died. Actually, so he
was soon and kind of managed to bat it away
and hush it up each time. But Maurice Fishbeine was
not going to let it go. He was extremely angry,
and so he starts exposing him in very highly publicized
(22:56):
news articles, and then more people are kind of asking
questions of like hang on a minute, which means not
a doctor, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
So do the authorities do anything?
Speaker 2 (23:06):
They do Eventually, I mean they have to get involved
because he's probably to seeing medicine without a license. He's
operating on people with no qualifications or reason to do
this at all. So eventually it is frowned upon. Even
in nineteen thirties, it's cause for people to have a
think about it. So in nineteen thirty he was called
(23:27):
before the Kansas Medical Board to face eleven charges. It
is like, can you show as your medical certificate? And
he's just holding up a piece of paper with doctor
written and crayon on it.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
So when the Kansas Medical Board looked into his qualifications
and what sort of investigation did they do?
Speaker 2 (23:44):
They did a pretty thorough investigation, actually, which in an
act of it's not even confidence, it's just lunacy. But
this is how much of a charlatan he was. He
actually invited members of the medical Board came and watch
him do one of his procedures.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
And they came, and they came.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Of course they came. So representatives come down and they
watch him literally sewing goat balls into a human being
with unsterilized equipment, at which point he's like tadah and
is genuinely shocked that they go, holy, no more for you, No,
you are done. It's worth saying as well here that
(24:21):
the boy goats survived, but the girl goats that he
took overaries out of the graft into women did not.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
You will know one think of the goats.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
No, just somebody justice for the goats. That's all that
I'm saying. They often get left out of this particular story.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
I see that his license to practice was revoked on
the grounds of gross immorality and unprofessional conduct.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yes, you can't get much firmer than that.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Can you No, you can't. Okay, he's lost his license
to practice medicine, potentially a disaster. He's still got the
radio though, He's still got that potential cash cow.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
He does, and it's a big cash cow as well,
And he's still got his Doctor Brinkley Show, and he's
still offering up medical advice and people are still writing
in and he's still pedaling his quack cures and it's
all right for a while, but our mate Morris Fishbeine
hasn't forgotten about it, and the pressure is now coming
on the Kansas authorities to investigate whether it is ethical
(25:15):
or not to have a disbarred lunatic offering up medical advice.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yes, and the Federal Radio Commission get involved in the end,
the spoil sports.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Spoil sports. But again, that's exactly what he is doing.
He isn't a medically qualified doctor. The advice that he's
given up is just gibberish, and he's administering care to
actual sick people. They're writing in with things that really
are wrong with them.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
He's got no idea what he's talking about, not.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
A clue, not a clue. So eventually they have to
pull the plug. On it and no more surgery and
no more radio for you.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
So things are not looking good for doctor John R.
Brinkley because he's not a doctor anymore, and neither is
he a DJ anymore. He's lost his radio show. Surely, though,
this can't be the end. This man is a master
of reinvention. Doctor Kate Lister will be back to he
knew his story after the break. You're listening to Cautionary
(26:19):
Tales with me Tim Harford and my guest, doctor Kate
Lister of the Betwixt the Sheets podcast. So, Kate, we've
been hearing the story of doctor Brinkley is a showman
without a show because he's lost his goat gland practice,
he's lost his radio station. What's he going to do?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
If there was any other normal human being, you'd just
give up, wouldn't you. You'd be I've been shamed on
a national level here, I've been exposed as the worst
kind of charlatan. But not Brinkley. He decides politics. That's
the place for me. That's what I will do. So
he who.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Would have thought that a failed convent would be attracted
by politics?
Speaker 2 (26:58):
It was the olden days, Tim will We'll never see
the like again. So he runs twice to be the
governor of Kansas.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
That's a big job.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
It's a big job.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Well, he's not just running for mayor governor of Kansas.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
As we've discovered, not being remotely qualified for a position
is no obstacle to Brinkley. He just can do attitude.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
And so he's got all the stars of his KFKB
radio station who can kind of chill for him and
support him. How does it go? I mean, is he
is he crushed?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Not nearly as epically as you would hope that he
would be. It's a reasonably close call. I think eventually
he came in third. I think. So they had this
rule in place where if the vote didn't match exactly
the name that he's running under, which was John R. Brinkley,
then the vote would be discounted. So if somebody didn't
put J. R. Brinkley, if they just put something like
(27:54):
Doc Brinkley, it would just be thrown out immediately. And
it has been suggested that if that hadn't happened, he
might have taken it.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
So he doesn't win in nineteen thirty because of all
those votes for Doc Brinkley and John Brinkley and he
doesn't get in. He nearly makes it. He tries again
Ineen thirty two, loses again. Can't be it for Brinkley.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Well, the second time that he ran, it did more
damage to his public image because his opponents realized that
they could make a mockery of him, and they did.
They held him up as just this crank goat ball
guy who's been disbarred and discredited, and so it created
even done.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
More damage earlier. But okay, eventually they figure out that
sort of time.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Actually, so he upsticks and he moves to dl Rio, Texas,
which is way down there on the border, where he
tries again to practice medicine. Only this time he takes
an increased interest in people's prostate glands.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Why do I think that's worse? Somehow, I think that's
even worse.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
But okay, I don't think that he's injecting or grafting
anything into anybody, but he's certainly examining people. And this
is like a world of suppositories and it's all nonsense.
And again it's the same thing. It's that, Oh, it's
manly vigor it will rejuvenate you. He gets another radio show,
radio another radio show, which again proves to be incredibly popular,
(29:19):
and again is his downfall. Because he can't just go
somewhere and shut up and do his weird prostate thing.
He has to broadcast it, so again he attracts attention.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
But the border is important there, right, because he can
put the radio transmitter in Mexico. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, So he gets around the American authorities that way,
because he's not allowed to do it in America but
from Mexico, even though they can hear it in America.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Yeah. I think they called it a border blaster. So
he's got this massive radio mast near his home, but
it's in Mexico, and therefore he's immune to American regulation.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
And again, this show is broadcast across the states. You
could pick it up in every single one of the states.
It was that powerful.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
So he resurrects his career, if indeed it ever really
went away. By nineteen thirty eight, he's got another hospital
in ar Yeah, he's living the high life. He's got mansions,
he's got yachts, cadillacs, luxury holidays. Nothing can go wrong
for Doc Brinkley.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Yeah, but Maurice Fishburne hadn't forgotten about him.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Oh right, he's old nemesis, old nemesis.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
And of course, because Brinkley can't keep quiet and stay
off the radar, Maurice Fishbine is just like, right, I'll
have you, and he publishes a number of exposes calling
him a quack and a charlatan and in a is
it a desperate act? Is it a mad act? It's
certainly what Oscar Wilde ended up doing. Brinkley, to defend
himself against this, decides that he's going to sue him
(30:45):
for libel. Bold move a terrible don't do it if
what the person is saying is perfectly.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
True, because it all then gets laid out in court,
all of it, All of.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
It gets laid out in court. The goat glands, the
unsterilized equipment they're operating while drunk, the fact that forty
two people that we know of died from these awful
operations because of infection, and god knows what else, and
how many goats died. Justice for the goats.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
I think we're probably gonna lead with the forty two
people dying suggestion. But yes, fair enough, but that's not
good for Brinkley, And.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
None of it's good for Brinkley. Obviously, the court finds
in fish mind's favor.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
I love the jury verdict is that Brinkley should be
considered a charlatan and a quack in the ordinary, well
understood meaning of these words like it. I like it.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Yeah, And there you go. And now there's a legal
precedent for it. He is legally a quack and a charlatan.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
And then I would love to have been a flower
on a wall when this letter arrives. The Irs sue
him for tax fraud.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, because he wasn't paying his taxes. Of course he wasn't.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Who would have thought?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Who would have thought?
Speaker 1 (31:51):
And then the Post Office sue him for male fraud.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, people sued him. It's like shark circling, isn't it?
And like once somebody's made the first bite is they're
all going him. He loses everything and we're not going
to feel remotely sorry for him at all.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Right, So this is the end of the nineteen thirties.
It sounds like it's basically the end for Brinkley's career.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Pretty much all avenues have been cut after him. He
kind of limps along for a little bit, muttering about
the injustice of it and about trying to resurrect some
kind of nonsense career, but he eventually suffers multiple heart attacks,
so his health is failing, and he died in nineteen
forty two, penniless and in disgrace.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Kate, this has been a joy. Whenever we have one
of our cautionary conversations, I always try to reflect, always
want to learn the lessons from history. So one lesson
I've learned is that I'm not going to have goat
testicles implanted in my scrotum.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
A wise move.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
But maybe there were who knows, maybe there were even
broader lessons to draw. What do you take from all this?
Speaker 2 (32:54):
I think there are lots of lessons from this for
the modern world, because medical quackery is still very much
with us. There's still people out there pedaling or manners
of lotions and potions and pills and powders claiming to
do this, that and the other, and it doesn't do
any than of the sort. And I think check your
credentials as well as like look into the background of
(33:15):
the person that's selling you something. Just because they put
on a good show doesn't mean that they absolutely know
what they're talking about.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah, I mean, it's amazing how much gets sold basically
by influencers. Now you know, it's on YouTube, it's on TikTok,
And actually the main reason why people buy it is because, well,
they like the influence, so they find them impressive. They
think they're cool, and that's enough.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
We should just be a bit firm with that and
just say no, we shouldn't be selling nonsense to people,
no matter what it does.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
I'm all in favor of actual evidence evidence. You know.
The other thing this whole story reminded me of Kate
is do you know lydia E pinkm Lily the Pink?
Speaker 2 (33:55):
I do know the story of Lily the Pink.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yes, So we did a cautionary tale about her. And
as you know, she developed this medicinal compound most efficacious
in every case, and it was basically just booze and
some herbs and probably didn't do much harm. Probably also
didn't do much good. But what I was really struck
by is, oh, yeah, she's a quack, right, there's no
(34:17):
evidence that this works. She's got no particular credentials, and
they set up this operation and it makes a huge
amount of money. Then I looked at what the actual
qualified medical profession had to offer for women's troubles. So
we're talking period pains, extreme period pains, miscarriages, prolapse uteruses,
none of which the docs at the time were really
(34:40):
very interested in diagnosing. But what doctors were doing was
prescribing medicines such as calamel. Calamel's basically just a mercury compound.
It rots your face away, it's poisonous. I mean, Lily
was basically just giving people some medicine that was about
as strong as sherry. Wasn't really going to do them
any harm. And so one of the lessons that I drew,
and I think this does tie into to Brinkley too,
(35:02):
is if people are not getting what they need from
mainstream medicine, of course they're going to look for alternatives.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
And Lydia Pinkham was another master personal image, wasn't she.
She had her face on billboards up and down the country.
Is this trustworthy woman with her efficacious compounds so famous?
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Great little story when Queen Victoria died some newspapersors didn't
actually have a photograph of Queen Victoria, so they slapped
a picture of Lydia Pinkham and Stixley. You know, lady
of a certain age looks about right.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Close enough, close enough?
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, well, I suppose that this is the broader lesson, right.
If we don't have the real thing, we go for
a substitute. That's true if it's a photograph of Queen
Victoria or Lydia Pinkham. But it's also true for medicines. Yeah.
So two very different characters, but fundamentally they're both spotting
a gap in the market and exploiting it.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Yeah, well, or marketing themselves really successfully.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Marketing is a It's the best drug, isn't it? Kate,
This has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much
for joining me. What do we call it?
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Betwixt the Cautionary Cautionary Tales?
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Well, if people would like a pure and unadulterated shot
of Betwixt the Sheets. The podcast is available in all
the usual pod.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Places available wherever you get your podcast. Just give us
a Google and we will jump.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Up and just give us a five second. What is
Betwixt the Sheets? For people who don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Betwixt the sheet is us having a look at the
ced side of history and getting betwixt the sheets of
the great and the good, and they're not so great
in the good as well, and learning what our ancestors
got up to in the sack.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
It's a joy to listen to. I love it, so
I hope some more people will discover it. Katelister, thank
you so much.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
For a full list of our sources, see the show
notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by
me Tim Harfor with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines and Ryan Dilly.
It's produced by Alice Fines and Marilyn Rust. The sound
design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise.
(37:19):
Additional sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio.
Bend A daf Haffrey edited the scripts. The show features
the voice talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough,
Sarah Jupp, messaam Monroe, Jamal Westman, and rufus Wright. The
show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of
(37:40):
Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohne, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody,
Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is
a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardore Studios
in London by Tom Berrin. If you like the show,
please remember to share, rate, and review. It really makes
(38:02):
a difference to us. And if you want to hear
the show ad free, the sign up to Pushkin Plus
on the show page on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin dot fm,
slash Plus
Pushkin. Milford, Kansas, nineteen seventeen, a forty six year old
farmer walks into the local drug store and bashfully asks
the town's young doctor if you can talk to him
about a rather delicate matter. Although John Romulus Brinkley is
(00:36):
a newcomer to the rural Kansas town, he's proven himself
by helping the locals through a recent flu epidemic. Sensing
the man's embarrassment, the doctor ushers him into a back room.
The problem is, the man explains, hesitatingly, he's lacking in pep,
(00:56):
his attires are flat. In short, he can't get it up.
He and his wife long for a child to complete
their family. Can The doctor help explains that he's tried
treating the sexually weak with serums and tinctures and even electricity,
(01:17):
but nothing has worked. Then, remembering his time working at
an abattoir, Brinkley jokes, you wouldn't have any trouble if
you had a pair of those buck glands in you. Well,
why don't you put him in? Asks the farmer. Brinkley
will later say that he felt seconded by the idea
and tried to halt the conversation by explaining the grave
(01:40):
health risks, but the farmer is desperate to father a
child and willing to give anything a go I don't
have a goat, the doctor protests, I do, the farmer replies,
and so late one night, the farmer, along with his
billy goat, pays a visit to the doctor's office for
(02:00):
a testicle transplant. Two weeks later, the farmer makes another
late night visit to the doctor's office, this time with
a spring in his step and a check for one
hundred and fifty dollars equivalent to thousands of dollars today.
He is delighted with his goat gland implants and has
been telling his friends. Soon more men are making late
(02:26):
night visits to the Milford drug store. Dr Brinkley needs
bigger premises and a barn for the goats. Patients will
pick out the beasts whose testicles they want implanted into
their own. Men will come from all over America seeking treatment.
Brinkley travels too, setting up temporary clinics across America and
(02:47):
even taking his treatments abroad. Newspapers report on the touring
goat gland doctor, and the man himself discovers that the
cutting edge technology of radio can bring him even more patients,
so many he'll have to build a proper road between
Milford Railway Station and his hospital. A man is as
(03:10):
old as his glands, and his glands are as old
as his sex glands, Brinkley tells his patients. So eager
are they to feel the effects of revitalized sex clans,
that few stopped to ponder the medical credentials of the
charming Dr Brinkley. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to
(03:32):
Cautionary Tales. Dr John Romulus Brinkley was a showman, a
(04:02):
great self publicist, and an unreliable narrator. The story about
the farmer, for example, comes from Brinkley himself, and not
everything he said was true, In particular, not everything he
said about his own medical qualifications. To guide us through
the fantastical claims of Dr John R. Brinkley and his
(04:23):
no less fantastical life is doctor Kate Lister, host of
one of my favorite podcasts, Betwixt the Sheets, the History
of Sex, scandal and Society. Kate, I am a huge fan.
Welcome to Cautionary Tales.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Well, thank you very much for having me on. I'm
always happy to talk about goat glands.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
I mean with the crossover between betwixt the Sheets and
cautionary Tales, is it's not too hard to find?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
No, this has been a long time coming, hasn't it?
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Really? No pun intended, but yes, it really has, it
really has. I am very, very keen to hear more
about doctor Brinkley, if you will pardon the pun. His
story is nuts.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
He was a fucking lunatic, That's who he was.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
So I think we already gathered that, but give us
the backstory. So before we get into these unusual treatments,
what was his early life like with was there any
sign of this interest in goat lands?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
What we know about him is gathered from his own
testimony and testimony of people he knew him, and various
historical records. But you've got to take everything with a
pinch assault when it comes to Brinkley, because he was
the master of spin. He appears to have been born
in Carolina only a decade after the Civil War had ended,
so you sort of have to factor that into it.
(05:40):
It was the bloodiest conflict America had ever seen, so
it's a post war world. Everyone's kind of walking around
like what on earth was that he's born? He grows
up quite poor. His parents die when he's young, and
he's raised by and an uncle, and he gets married
in his twenties. At some point he works in an avatar,
(06:01):
which is where we think he first saw a goat
and went, oh, I'll store that away for future.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, I could use that.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yes, For some reason, he thought that a goat was
the most hygienic animal. That's he first read flag that one,
isn't it.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I have all sorts of thoughts about goats, but hygienic
is not the one that doesn't leap to mind of it.
Maybe that's just my own ignorance.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Maybe that's just our goat prejudice. But anyway, he thought
that they were fantastic. He gets married to his first wife,
a woman called Sally Wick, and they go on the
road as this kind of traveling medicine act together. So
you've already got the start of this combining of quack
medicine and showmanship. So they would go to rural towns
(06:43):
and sort of put on a big show for the
local folks and then flog them well snake oil really
just just nonsense and rubbish, but they were pretty good
at it.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
As a famous economics paper about the history of the
market for snake oil, and it grew hugely during the
period we're discussing, so the late eighteen hundreds and then
the first half of the twentieth century, huge market, and
a lot of it involved circuses, So you had to
get a crowd in order to sell them whatever it
was that you were selling them, and circus is a
(07:15):
good way to attract attention.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
It is completely mad. I mean, would you take medical
advice from a clown at a circus?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Nothing against clowns, but that wouldn't be my first board
of call. But I guess when we think about the
demand for what we might call unproven treatments today being
that's true. So on the TikTok on YouTube, and again
it's attention. You've got an influencer, somebody who you're paying
attention to because they're doing interesting things, and then suddenly
(07:41):
they're trying to sell you their latest goop or creams
or pills and not so different.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
But if he'd been around today, I think he would
have been on TikTok, would Brinkley. But he was traveling
around towns, he's doing his act, he's selling nonsense, and
then at some point he tries to settle down in Chicago,
and he must have had a thought along the way
of like, I'm not really a doctor.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Yeah, well, okay, spoiler, he's not a doctor.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Something must have occurred to like, I'm treating all these
people and I'm not a medical person.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So he had no medical qualification?
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Can do attitude? Tim? Is what he had? He had?
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Did he claim to be a doctor or did he
have any sort of qualifications at all?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Not at this point, and the qualifications that he does
get are best described as gubious. He went to study
at the Chicago Bennett Medical School. Eclectic medicine was just
sort of the study of botany, herbal cures and a
bit of physiotherapy as well, So it's already a little
bit okay, and it's not an accredited college that he's
(08:45):
studying at, and he doesn't even manage to finish it
because he can't pay the tuition fees. At this point,
he seems to be working a lot of different jobs
to try and pay these fees, and he can't, so
he drops out. And then eventually he goes to the
Kansas City Eclectic Medical School, which is again is a
nonsense it's just a front. They were known as diploma mills,
and he just buys a diploma in the same way
(09:05):
that occasionally Charlatan's get exposed today because they've bought a
PhD online.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Okay, so he's got a fig leaf of a qualification,
but he hasn't any got any serious training. And then
he ends up in Milford, Kansas. How did he end
up there from Chicago?
Speaker 2 (09:20):
He ditches his wife by the way in between these
two points, and his children, he just leaves them and
he takes up with another woman called Minnie, who he
bigamously marries. And at this point he's trying to run
a kind of a medical center in Chicago where he's
basically injecting men with colored water and telling them that
this is good for their manly vigor. And the authorities
(09:43):
get wise to it, and so he needs to get
out there quick smart. And there's an advert for the
town of Milford where they need a physician. So he
thinks that will do me and him and Minnie pack
up their spotted handkerchief and head to Kansas.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, and then yeah, flu hits and he tends people.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
He was really popular.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I mean, aside manner will get you along well. And
with flu. I mean at the time, there's no flu vaccine.
I guess there's no treatment, so you just kind of
like be nice to people and.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Be nice to people.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, But he was really popular when he first arrives
because he's this new doctor. Nobody's questioning that he calls
himself a doctor. It's a small rual town. There's a
few hundred people, and they're just thrilled to have a doctor.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
And then somehow he makes this leap from eclectic medicine,
so basically colored water and some herbs and spices, and
I mean that's pretty ordinary. It's a lot of people
doing that at this point in history. He leaps into
the goat gland game. Yeah. I know that there are
different accounts of the first operation, but we know that
he did, in fact in plant goatlands. So what where
(10:52):
would I really I'm going to regret asking this. Where
did he put them?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Well, he put them into the testicles, into the scrotums
of men, and there are descriptions of the surgery that
he did.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Scrotums being stretchedy there's room for four testicles rather than two.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
That's you've pretty much got it. So he had this
idea that you had to use the goat's gland within
twenty minutes of severing it. So he would basically castraight
the goats, cut out the gland from the testicle, put
it in salted water to keep it at room temperature,
and then rush it into the other room where he
would have numbed up his victims scrotum with local anesthetic,
(11:31):
and then with two incisions he would put the entire
gland just under the surface of the skin. And he
said that he was doing things like joining up blood
vessels and ensuring oxygen to play. He wasn't doing any
of that. He's just jamming a bullock in and then
he stitches it up. That's what he was doing. I
can't for you, but don't you know what. He didn't
(11:54):
come up with this in a vacuum. This was the
time of very very early hormone treatment. And I say
early in the fact that they discovered what hormones were.
And he wasn't the only mad person grafting testicles into
other testicles. There was an American Russian physician called Serge
Voronov who at least was medically qualified, right, and he
(12:15):
was doing it with monkey to worse. I don't know.
I don't know, but you could do.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
The thinking is part of the story, actually, which is
that you've got these quacks, but the mainstream of medical
practice is not necessarily any better. It doesn't necessarily have
any more evidence. They've just got more authority.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
And it made sense to them in a way of like, right,
we've discovered that testosterone is important for men and it
makes them feel peppy, and we've discovered it's made in testicles.
So if we take a testicle and we put it
in another testicle, see how it's fallen apart quite quickly.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Now.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
But I was like, I was with you right up
until that.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
It feels like spinal tap. Four testicles for test is
more than two.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
So that was the theory behind it. So you've got
serge Varanov doing it with monkey glands. Apparently he wasn't
in certain the entire glands. He was cutting slivers off
and then stitching it up inside men's scrota. He at
least was medically trained and had some gloss of pseudoscience
with it. Brinkley had nothing. He just had a scalpel
(13:18):
and a goat.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And the thing that I find most astonishing about this
is that a load of men seemed really keen to
have this done. It was hugely popular around the block.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
It was hugely popular. The gland therapy, as it was
called at the time, was really big in the twenties
and thirties. You could even buy like rejuvenating face cream
that claimed it was made from glands. It was like
the thing because it was like a pseudo hormone treatment.
The absolute apex of it was having actual testicles. So
(13:49):
apparently the first person that came to Brinkley and when
would you please put a goat testicle inside mine? And
he went, oh, I'll have to have a think about
that eventually, when yeah, are right. So he said that
he wanted to do this because he was impotent in
his wife want to get pregnant, and lo and behold,
his wife becomes pregnant, the baby is born. They call
him Billy, of course they do, and it's hailed as
(14:11):
the first goat gland baby. Because if there's one thing
Brinkley is amazing at its self publicity. I've got in
front of me a copy of his advertisement for Billy,
the first goat gland.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Oh wow, baby.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
So if I shared that well.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I'm looking at a cute baby. It doesn't look at
all like a goat, does it. I mean a toddler,
I guess, other than a baby, but it looks about one.
But yes, Kansas surgeon uses goat glands to cure sterility.
First goat gland baby, Dr John R. Brinkley and Billy amazing.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
So he uses this as an opportunity to launch this
incredible treatment. This young boy, Billy is used as the
definitive proof and it's pedaled as this cure. It'll get
rid of impotence, it will pep you up, it'll rejuvenate
your sex life. And he was charging people. Well, it's
about seven hundred and fifty dollars, but in today's money,
that's well over ten grand.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Off the top of my head, I would say that's
probably a year's income, depends exactly how you make that.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Just show how desperate people were for this treatment though.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, and people today spend a great deal for fertility treatment.
You know, it's enormously important.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Of course, just cast your mind back to when viagra
was launched.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Yeah, people lost.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Their minds with it, didn't it. There was reports of
doctors having to stamp prescriptions. With a rubber stamp because
the hand was cramping from signing so many of them.
So that's how popular viagra was. This was their viagra, Yes,
and they really thought that it was going to work.
So he is cues around the block, and not just
from the local community. There was Chinese patients who came
to see him that had been traveling around the world
(15:42):
and thought they would just stop off in Kansas to
have goat testicles put inside themselves, and it becomes this
huge media sensation.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
This is one of the reasons why nerds like me
are very keen on randomized trials, because people are able
to convince themselves that all sorts of things work. Impotence
is sometimes just in your head. Yeah, Sometimes it's got
a physical cause. Sometimes you're overthinking it.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
And I can well imagine that this guy went home
from his goatland operation full of confidence and suddenly he
he could get it up.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
So when they look at placebo effect, it's more effective
if the person a ministering the treatment looks like a
doctor has a white coatconn dot cells doctor. If there's
some level of surgical intervention, we're more inclined to believe.
And this has got all of the above, plus when
they go home they actually do have a lump in
their scrotum that is a coach testical. So I mean,
(16:37):
I am unaware if there is any medical benefit whatsoever
to do in this. I'm going to go out on
a limb and say.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
No, Kate, you can't argue with results. Baby Billy was born.
Baby Billy, the first goatland baby. Customers are happy. I
can't imagine that anything is going to go wrong, but
we'll find out after the break. You are listening to
Cautionary Tales with me Tim Harford with my special guest,
(17:04):
doctor Kate Lister of the brilliant Betwixt the Sheets podcast,
And so after the break we will hear the next
twist in the story about how the goat gland doctor
became a radio star. Welcome back to Cautionary Tales with me,
(17:30):
Tim Harford and the inimitable doctor Kate Lister. So, Kate,
we were one hundred years ago, the early nineteen twenties.
At this point, just how big was Brinkley's goat gland
transplant operation.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
It was big, and it was growing all the time
because the more he did it, the more he self publicized.
The more people wanted to come and see him, so
it becomes this beast that's feeding on itself. And he
would do things like get famous newspaper editors to come
and have a transplant, and they would then report on
(18:05):
their progress. Some guy from the La Times, Henry Chandler,
came down, and I know, I know that's that's commitment
to journalists.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
I've med a couple of newspapers. I'm not sure they'd.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Go for the more testicons, but he would do things
like that, and then he would and then so then
he's got major newspapers writing about him and his absolute
true degra is. He leapt into radio and he utilized
that in such a powerful way. He set up his
own radio station and they called it KFKB.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Kansas First Kansas.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Kansas First, Kansas Best.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
But it's very much it's the TikTok of the nineteen twenty.
This is the new cutting edge way of communicating.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
And it really was cutting edge as well. And he
would have local acts and local music groups come on
and do their little bit, like local choirs would come
on and sing. But as well, he had his own
segment twice daily where he would dispense medical advice, which
you're into very dubious territory here. Again, people from all
(19:11):
over the country would write in about their medical complaints.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
All over the country. I thought it was a local
radio station.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
It had a really big reach. It it wasn't listened
to just in Kansas. Is that the power of this
thing was enormous. I think at one point it was
the biggest radio station in the country, the most popular
and most listened to radio show.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
So he's a huge success. Massive that sort of success
must start to attract screutiny.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Well it does. It's not local radio, so other people
are listening in, and you've got a situation where Brinkley
is reading out random people's medical complaints, diagnosing them live
on the air, and then prescribing a treatment that only
his pharmacy could supply. Oneing is going off there. But
it was again massively, massively popular. But you can imagine
(20:01):
other doctors, real doctors with actual credentials, listening into this
and going.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Hang on a minute, hang on a minute.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Just give me a second. So he's getting way, way,
way too big for his boots. So he's making loads
of money, and his nemesis was an actual proper doctor
Maurice Fishbeine, who was a member of the American Medical Association,
and he was hell bent on exposing quacks and charlatans,
of which, as we've already said, there were many, and
(20:29):
this was his life's work. So he was on to
Brinkley pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And he didn't hold back, did he.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
He did not, He did not.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Got one quote in front of me says he described
Brinkley as a charlatan of the rankest sort, whose radio
station was being used to victimize people and to enrich himself,
which I don't know seems fair enough.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
All true, that's exactly what was happening. But you've got
to remember that Brinkley had managed to cultivate this huge
popularity in the local community and well in the wider
community as well. So to begin with Maurice Fishbeine, there's
this sort of lone voice, like all you mean trying
to take away our young successful doctor. And of course
(21:12):
the Milford residents love it because it's bringing loads of
money to the town. It's bringing loads of business into
the town.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
They don't want to challenge, they don't want to challenge.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Shut up, shut up.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
I mean I found this when Cautionary Tails did the
story of the Radium Dial Company and these poor young
women who were giving themselves radium poisoning working painting this
radioactive paint on watchfaces and other things. One of the
problems they faced was that not only did the doctors
not take them seriously, and not only did the company
(21:42):
deny everything, but their local community ostracized them. Yeah, because
they were like, you are going to shut down this factory.
It's the nineteen thirties, it's a tough time economically. You're
going to destroy everyone's jobs just because you're moaning about
the fact that your jaws falling off or something. They
were so lonely because the local community would not back
them against the Radium Dial Company. And it seems like
(22:06):
we've got a similar thing going on here with Brinkley
that yeah, okay, fine, maybe the goat glands work, maybe
they don't, but this is jobs, this is.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Jobs, this is income. And it's also put Milford on
the map. Great the capital, isn't it fabulous? And there
are loads of people out there really think that he's
helped them. There are many others that did not. He
was sued at least twelve times in the nineteen thirties
because unsurprisingly, these operations were not the success. He's not
(22:34):
going to give the testimonials of the people who wander
back in and going scrotum's gone purple. There were people
having infections, there were people that died. Actually, so he
was soon and kind of managed to bat it away
and hush it up each time. But Maurice Fishbeine was
not going to let it go. He was extremely angry,
and so he starts exposing him in very highly publicized
(22:56):
news articles, and then more people are kind of asking
questions of like hang on a minute, which means not
a doctor, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
So do the authorities do anything?
Speaker 2 (23:06):
They do Eventually, I mean they have to get involved
because he's probably to seeing medicine without a license. He's
operating on people with no qualifications or reason to do
this at all. So eventually it is frowned upon. Even
in nineteen thirties, it's cause for people to have a
think about it. So in nineteen thirty he was called
(23:27):
before the Kansas Medical Board to face eleven charges. It
is like, can you show as your medical certificate? And
he's just holding up a piece of paper with doctor
written and crayon on it.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
So when the Kansas Medical Board looked into his qualifications
and what sort of investigation did they do?
Speaker 2 (23:44):
They did a pretty thorough investigation, actually, which in an
act of it's not even confidence, it's just lunacy. But
this is how much of a charlatan he was. He
actually invited members of the medical Board came and watch
him do one of his procedures.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
And they came, and they came.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Of course they came. So representatives come down and they
watch him literally sewing goat balls into a human being
with unsterilized equipment, at which point he's like tadah and
is genuinely shocked that they go, holy, no more for you, No,
you are done. It's worth saying as well here that
(24:21):
the boy goats survived, but the girl goats that he
took overaries out of the graft into women did not.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
You will know one think of the goats.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
No, just somebody justice for the goats. That's all that
I'm saying. They often get left out of this particular story.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
I see that his license to practice was revoked on
the grounds of gross immorality and unprofessional conduct.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yes, you can't get much firmer than that.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Can you No, you can't. Okay, he's lost his license
to practice medicine, potentially a disaster. He's still got the
radio though, He's still got that potential cash cow.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
He does, and it's a big cash cow as well,
And he's still got his Doctor Brinkley Show, and he's
still offering up medical advice and people are still writing
in and he's still pedaling his quack cures and it's
all right for a while, but our mate Morris Fishbeine
hasn't forgotten about it, and the pressure is now coming
on the Kansas authorities to investigate whether it is ethical
(25:15):
or not to have a disbarred lunatic offering up medical advice.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yes, and the Federal Radio Commission get involved in the end,
the spoil sports.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Spoil sports. But again, that's exactly what he is doing.
He isn't a medically qualified doctor. The advice that he's
given up is just gibberish, and he's administering care to
actual sick people. They're writing in with things that really
are wrong with them.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
He's got no idea what he's talking about, not.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
A clue, not a clue. So eventually they have to
pull the plug. On it and no more surgery and
no more radio for you.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
So things are not looking good for doctor John R.
Brinkley because he's not a doctor anymore, and neither is
he a DJ anymore. He's lost his radio show. Surely, though,
this can't be the end. This man is a master
of reinvention. Doctor Kate Lister will be back to he
knew his story after the break. You're listening to Cautionary
(26:19):
Tales with me Tim Harford and my guest, doctor Kate
Lister of the Betwixt the Sheets podcast. So, Kate, we've
been hearing the story of doctor Brinkley is a showman
without a show because he's lost his goat gland practice,
he's lost his radio station. What's he going to do?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
If there was any other normal human being, you'd just
give up, wouldn't you. You'd be I've been shamed on
a national level here, I've been exposed as the worst
kind of charlatan. But not Brinkley. He decides politics. That's
the place for me. That's what I will do. So
he who.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Would have thought that a failed convent would be attracted
by politics?
Speaker 2 (26:58):
It was the olden days, Tim will We'll never see
the like again. So he runs twice to be the
governor of Kansas.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
That's a big job.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
It's a big job.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Well, he's not just running for mayor governor of Kansas.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
As we've discovered, not being remotely qualified for a position
is no obstacle to Brinkley. He just can do attitude.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
And so he's got all the stars of his KFKB
radio station who can kind of chill for him and
support him. How does it go? I mean, is he
is he crushed?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Not nearly as epically as you would hope that he
would be. It's a reasonably close call. I think eventually
he came in third. I think. So they had this
rule in place where if the vote didn't match exactly
the name that he's running under, which was John R. Brinkley,
then the vote would be discounted. So if somebody didn't
put J. R. Brinkley, if they just put something like
(27:54):
Doc Brinkley, it would just be thrown out immediately. And
it has been suggested that if that hadn't happened, he
might have taken it.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
So he doesn't win in nineteen thirty because of all
those votes for Doc Brinkley and John Brinkley and he
doesn't get in. He nearly makes it. He tries again
Ineen thirty two, loses again. Can't be it for Brinkley.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Well, the second time that he ran, it did more
damage to his public image because his opponents realized that
they could make a mockery of him, and they did.
They held him up as just this crank goat ball
guy who's been disbarred and discredited, and so it created
even done.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
More damage earlier. But okay, eventually they figure out that
sort of time.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Actually, so he upsticks and he moves to dl Rio, Texas,
which is way down there on the border, where he
tries again to practice medicine. Only this time he takes
an increased interest in people's prostate glands.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Why do I think that's worse? Somehow, I think that's
even worse.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
But okay, I don't think that he's injecting or grafting
anything into anybody, but he's certainly examining people. And this
is like a world of suppositories and it's all nonsense.
And again it's the same thing. It's that, Oh, it's
manly vigor it will rejuvenate you. He gets another radio show,
radio another radio show, which again proves to be incredibly popular,
(29:19):
and again is his downfall. Because he can't just go
somewhere and shut up and do his weird prostate thing.
He has to broadcast it, so again he attracts attention.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
But the border is important there, right, because he can
put the radio transmitter in Mexico. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, So he gets around the American authorities that way,
because he's not allowed to do it in America but
from Mexico, even though they can hear it in America.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Yeah. I think they called it a border blaster. So
he's got this massive radio mast near his home, but
it's in Mexico, and therefore he's immune to American regulation.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
And again, this show is broadcast across the states. You
could pick it up in every single one of the states.
It was that powerful.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
So he resurrects his career, if indeed it ever really
went away. By nineteen thirty eight, he's got another hospital
in ar Yeah, he's living the high life. He's got mansions,
he's got yachts, cadillacs, luxury holidays. Nothing can go wrong
for Doc Brinkley.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Yeah, but Maurice Fishburne hadn't forgotten about him.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Oh right, he's old nemesis, old nemesis.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
And of course, because Brinkley can't keep quiet and stay
off the radar, Maurice Fishbine is just like, right, I'll
have you, and he publishes a number of exposes calling
him a quack and a charlatan and in a is
it a desperate act? Is it a mad act? It's
certainly what Oscar Wilde ended up doing. Brinkley, to defend
himself against this, decides that he's going to sue him
(30:45):
for libel. Bold move a terrible don't do it if
what the person is saying is perfectly.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
True, because it all then gets laid out in court,
all of it, All of.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
It gets laid out in court. The goat glands, the
unsterilized equipment they're operating while drunk, the fact that forty
two people that we know of died from these awful
operations because of infection, and god knows what else, and
how many goats died. Justice for the goats.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
I think we're probably gonna lead with the forty two
people dying suggestion. But yes, fair enough, but that's not
good for Brinkley, And.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
None of it's good for Brinkley. Obviously, the court finds
in fish mind's favor.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
I love the jury verdict is that Brinkley should be
considered a charlatan and a quack in the ordinary, well
understood meaning of these words like it. I like it.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Yeah, And there you go. And now there's a legal
precedent for it. He is legally a quack and a charlatan.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
And then I would love to have been a flower
on a wall when this letter arrives. The Irs sue
him for tax fraud.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, because he wasn't paying his taxes. Of course he wasn't.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Who would have thought?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Who would have thought?
Speaker 1 (31:51):
And then the Post Office sue him for male fraud.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, people sued him. It's like shark circling, isn't it?
And like once somebody's made the first bite is they're
all going him. He loses everything and we're not going
to feel remotely sorry for him at all.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Right, So this is the end of the nineteen thirties.
It sounds like it's basically the end for Brinkley's career.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Pretty much all avenues have been cut after him. He
kind of limps along for a little bit, muttering about
the injustice of it and about trying to resurrect some
kind of nonsense career, but he eventually suffers multiple heart attacks,
so his health is failing, and he died in nineteen
forty two, penniless and in disgrace.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Kate, this has been a joy. Whenever we have one
of our cautionary conversations, I always try to reflect, always
want to learn the lessons from history. So one lesson
I've learned is that I'm not going to have goat
testicles implanted in my scrotum.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
A wise move.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
But maybe there were who knows, maybe there were even
broader lessons to draw. What do you take from all this?
Speaker 2 (32:54):
I think there are lots of lessons from this for
the modern world, because medical quackery is still very much
with us. There's still people out there pedaling or manners
of lotions and potions and pills and powders claiming to
do this, that and the other, and it doesn't do
any than of the sort. And I think check your
credentials as well as like look into the background of
(33:15):
the person that's selling you something. Just because they put
on a good show doesn't mean that they absolutely know
what they're talking about.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah, I mean, it's amazing how much gets sold basically
by influencers. Now you know, it's on YouTube, it's on TikTok,
And actually the main reason why people buy it is because, well,
they like the influence, so they find them impressive. They
think they're cool, and that's enough.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
We should just be a bit firm with that and
just say no, we shouldn't be selling nonsense to people,
no matter what it does.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
I'm all in favor of actual evidence evidence. You know.
The other thing this whole story reminded me of Kate
is do you know lydia E pinkm Lily the Pink?
Speaker 2 (33:55):
I do know the story of Lily the Pink.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yes, So we did a cautionary tale about her. And
as you know, she developed this medicinal compound most efficacious
in every case, and it was basically just booze and
some herbs and probably didn't do much harm. Probably also
didn't do much good. But what I was really struck
by is, oh, yeah, she's a quack, right, there's no
(34:17):
evidence that this works. She's got no particular credentials, and
they set up this operation and it makes a huge
amount of money. Then I looked at what the actual
qualified medical profession had to offer for women's troubles. So
we're talking period pains, extreme period pains, miscarriages, prolapse uteruses,
none of which the docs at the time were really
(34:40):
very interested in diagnosing. But what doctors were doing was
prescribing medicines such as calamel. Calamel's basically just a mercury compound.
It rots your face away, it's poisonous. I mean, Lily
was basically just giving people some medicine that was about
as strong as sherry. Wasn't really going to do them
any harm. And so one of the lessons that I drew,
and I think this does tie into to Brinkley too,
(35:02):
is if people are not getting what they need from
mainstream medicine, of course they're going to look for alternatives.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
And Lydia Pinkham was another master personal image, wasn't she.
She had her face on billboards up and down the country.
Is this trustworthy woman with her efficacious compounds so famous?
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Great little story when Queen Victoria died some newspapersors didn't
actually have a photograph of Queen Victoria, so they slapped
a picture of Lydia Pinkham and Stixley. You know, lady
of a certain age looks about right.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Close enough, close enough?
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, well, I suppose that this is the broader lesson, right.
If we don't have the real thing, we go for
a substitute. That's true if it's a photograph of Queen
Victoria or Lydia Pinkham. But it's also true for medicines. Yeah.
So two very different characters, but fundamentally they're both spotting
a gap in the market and exploiting it.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Yeah, well, or marketing themselves really successfully.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Marketing is a It's the best drug, isn't it? Kate,
This has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much
for joining me. What do we call it?
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Betwixt the Cautionary Cautionary Tales?
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Well, if people would like a pure and unadulterated shot
of Betwixt the Sheets. The podcast is available in all
the usual pod.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Places available wherever you get your podcast. Just give us
a Google and we will jump.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Up and just give us a five second. What is
Betwixt the Sheets? For people who don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Betwixt the sheet is us having a look at the
ced side of history and getting betwixt the sheets of
the great and the good, and they're not so great
in the good as well, and learning what our ancestors
got up to in the sack.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
It's a joy to listen to. I love it, so
I hope some more people will discover it. Katelister, thank
you so much.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
For a full list of our sources, see the show
notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by
me Tim Harfor with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines and Ryan Dilly.
It's produced by Alice Fines and Marilyn Rust. The sound
design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise.
(37:19):
Additional sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio.
Bend A daf Haffrey edited the scripts. The show features
the voice talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough,
Sarah Jupp, messaam Monroe, Jamal Westman, and rufus Wright. The
show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of
(37:40):
Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohne, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody,
Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is
a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardore Studios
in London by Tom Berrin. If you like the show,
please remember to share, rate, and review. It really makes
(38:02):
a difference to us. And if you want to hear
the show ad free, the sign up to Pushkin Plus
on the show page on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin dot fm,
slash Plus
Host
Tim Harford
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