John Romulus Brinkley (later John Richard Brinkley; July 8, 1885 – May 26, 1942) was an American quack doctor, broadcaster, marketer and independent politician. He had no accredited education as a physician and bought his medical degree from a diploma mill. Brinkley became known as the "goat-gland doctor" after he achieved national fame, international notoriety, and wealth through the xenotransplantation of goat testicles into humans. Although Brinkley initially promoted this procedure as a means of curing male impotence, he later claimed that the technique was a virtual panacea for a wide range of male ailments. Brinkley operated clinics and hospitals in several states and was able to continue practicing medicine for almost two decades, despite his techniques being thoroughly discredited by the broader medical community.
He was also an advertising and radio pioneer who began the era of Mexican border blaster radio.Lee, 2002, p. 2.
Although he was stripped of his license to practice medicine in Kansas and several other states, Brinkley, a demagogue beloved by hundreds of thousands of people in Kansas and elsewhere, nevertheless launched three campaigns for Kansas governor, two of which were nearly successful. Brinkley's rise to fame and fortune was as quick as his eventual fall was precipitous. At the height of his career, he had amassed millions of dollars, but he died nearly penniless as a result of the large number of malpractice, wrongful death, and fraud suits brought against him.
Early life Brinkley was born to John Richard Brinkley, a poor mountain man who practiced medicine in North Carolina and served as a medic for the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Brinkley senior's first marriage was annulled because he was underage. After he reached adulthood, he married four more times and outlived each of his wives. In 1870, at the age of 42, he married Sarah T. Mingus. Later, the 24-year-old niece of Mingus, Sarah Candice Burnett, moved into the house. The family called Brinkley's wife "Sally" to differentiate between the two Sarahs. Sarah Burnett gave birth out of wedlock to John Romulus Brinkley in the town of Beta, in Jackson County, North Carolina, naming her son after his father, and after Romulus, the mythical twin suckled by wolves. Sarah Burnett died of pneumonia and tuberculosis when Brinkley was five.Lee, 2002, pp. 3–4. Sarah T. "Aunt Sally" and John Brinkley moved with Sarah Burnett's child to East LaPorte within the same county, near the Tuckasegee River. The family had little money during this time.
John Richard Brinkley died when his son was ten years old. The young Brinkley attended a one-room log cabin school in the Tuckasegee area, held each year during three or four months of winter. There, Brinkley met Sally Margaret Wike, the daughter of a well-off school board member.Lee, 2002, p. 8. Brinkley finished his studies at 16 and began to work carrying mail between local towns, and to learn how to use a telegraph. He wished, however, to become a doctor.
Family and education As a telegrapher, Brinkley went to New York City to work for Western Union, after which he moved to New Jersey to work at one, then another, railway company.Lee, 2002, pp. 11–12. In late 1906, he returned home to Aunt Sally after hearing that she was unwell. She died on December 25, 1906. Afterward, he was comforted by Sally Wike, age 22 and one year older than Brinkley. They married on January 27, 1907, in Sylva, North Carolina. They traveled around posing as Quaker doctors, giving rural towns a medicine show where they hawked a patent medicine. Brinkley's next move was to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he played right-hand man, helping hawk virility "tonics" with a man named Dr. Burke.Brock, 2008, pp. 7-9
In 1907, Brinkley settled with his wife in Chicago, where they celebrated the birth of their daughter Wanda Marion Brinkley on November 5. John Brinkley then enrolled at Bennett Medical College, an unaccredited school with curricula focused on eclectic medicine.Brock, 2008, p. 15.Lee, 2002, p. 13. Brinkley worked for Western Union as a telegrapher at night and attended classes during the day, while debts mounted from tuition, the cost of raising a family, and from Sally's self-centered whims. In 1908, the Brinkleys buried an infant son who had lived only three days.Lee, 2002, pp. 17–19.
At school, Brinkley was introduced to the study of glandular extracts and their effects on the human system. He determined that this new field would help move his career forward. After two years of studies, and ever-deeper debts, Brinkley doubled his summer workload by taking two shifts at Western Union, but came home one day to find his wife and daughter gone. Sally filed for divorce and child support, but after two months of payments, Brinkley kidnapped his daughter and fled with her to Canada. Sally Brinkley, unable to obtain an extradition order from Canada, dismissed her suit for alimony and child support, allowing Brinkley to return to Chicago with the child where the couple reunited in marriage.
In 1911, before Brinkley was finished with his third year of studies, Sally left him again, and bore him another daughter, Erna Maxine Brinkley, on July 11, 1911, back home in the Tuckasegee area. Brinkley left Chicago and his unpaid tuition bills to return to North Carolina and join his family. There, he began working as an "undergraduate physician", but failed to establish himself. He moved his family around to different towns in Florida and North Carolina, "packing up and going all the time from one place to another".
Diploma mill In 1912, Brinkley left his family to try to regain the thread of his education, this time in St. Louis, Missouri. He was unable to pay Bennett Medical College the tuition he owed them, so they refused to forward his scholastic records to any of the medical schools that Brinkley had approached. Instead, Brinkley bought a certificate from a diploma mill known as the Kansas City Eclectic Medical University and returned home. On February 11, 1913, his daughter Naomi Beryl Brinkley was born. The family of five immediately moved to New York City, and shortly thereafter to Chicago. When Brinkley refused to give up his goal of becoming a doctor, Sally Brinkley left him one final time, taking the three girls home to North Carolina.
Brinkley set up a storefront business in Greenville, South Carolina, with a man named James E. Crawford (using the alias J. W. Burks).Lee, 2002, pp. 20–22. The two opened their shop as the "Greenville Electro Medic Doctors", and placed advertisements to attract men who were concerned about their manly vigor. They injected colored water into their patients at $25 a shot (), telling them it was Salvarsan or "electric medicine from Germany".Brock, 2008, p. 21 After two months, the partners hurriedly left town with unpaid rent and utility bills, as well as debts for clothing and pharmaceutical supplies. The local newspaper reported that the duo left about 30 to 40 local merchants with unpaid checks. They ended up where Crawford had once lived, in Memphis, Tennessee.
Second marriage In Memphis, Brinkley met 21-year-old Minerva Telitha "Minnie" Jones, a friend of Crawford's and the daughter of a local physician. On August 23, 1913, after a four-day courtship, Brinkley and Jones married at the Peabody Hotel, even though he was still married to Sally Brinkley. Minnie and John Brinkley honeymooned in Kansas City, Denver, Pocatello and Knoxville. Brinkley was arrested in Knoxville and extradited to Greenville where he was put in jail for practicing medicine without a license and for writing bad checks. Brinkley told the sheriff that it was all Crawford's fault, and gave investigators enough information that they were able to arrest Crawford in Pocatello. The two former partners met again in jail. Brinkley and Minerva had a son, John, who would commit suicide in the 1970s.
Brinkley and Crawford decided to settle out of court with Greenville's angry merchants for a sum of several thousand dollars, most of which Crawford paid. Brinkley's new father-in-law paid Brinkley's bail, but only contributed $200 to his fraudulent debt settlement ().Brock, 2008, p. 24 Brinkley rejoined Minnie Brinkley in Memphis. There, Sally Brinkley confronted the couple, informing Minnie Brinkley that her husband was a bigamist. Minnie and John Brinkley moved to Judsonia, Arkansas, where he again obtained an "undergraduate license" to practice medicine, advertising his specialty as "diseases of women and children". He made little profit, and joined the Army Reserve Medical Corps.
Brinkley accepted an offer to take over the office of another doctor who was moving out of state. Brinkley began to turn a modest profit, and was finally able to pay Bennett Medical University the amount owed for tuition. In October 1914, the Brinkleys moved to Kansas City where he enrolled at that city's Eclectic Medical University to finish out his last year remaining of the education he started at Bennett. After studying the irritations and enlargements of the prostate gland in elderly men, and paying the university $100 (), Brinkley graduated on May 7, 1915. His diploma from Eclectic allowed him to practice medicine in eight states. While in Kansas City, Brinkley took a job as the doctor for the Swift and Company plant, patching minor wounds and studying animal physiology. It was here that Brinkley learned that popular opinion held that the healthiest animal slaughtered at the plant was the goat, something that would prove pivotal to his later medical career.*Fowler, Gene and Crawford, Bill. Border Radio: Quacks, yodelers, pitchmen, psychics, and other amazing broadcasters of the American airwaves, Texas Monthly Press, Austin. 1987.
To resolve the possibility of his bigamy being exposed, Minnie pushed Brinkley to file for divorce from Sally, which he did in December 1915. To prevent the court from inquiring of Sally directly, he wrote that they had been married in New York City, and that he did not know her new place of residence. The divorce was finalized on February 21, 1916.Lee, 2002, pp. 23–24. Four days later, Minnie and Brinkley were married again, this time in Liberty, Missouri. Brinkley had not waited the required six months from divorce to subsequent remarriage.
In 1917, Brinkley, now an Army Reservist, was called up for service during World War I. However, he only served a little over two months, most of the duration of which he was sick with a nervous breakdown, before being discharged. In October of the same year, Brinkley and his wife moved to Milford, Kansas, after having spotted a newspaper advertisement saying the town needed a doctor.Brock, 2008, pp. 27, 39-40
Goat gland transplantation In 1918, Brinkley opened a 16-room clinic in Milford, Kansas, at which time he also started making house calls on patients afflicted with the 1918 Flu Pandemic. Accounts of his success at nursing flu victims back to health and the lengths to which he went to treat them were resoundingly positive.Brock, 2008, p. 39-40
As recounted in the biography that Brinkley had commissioned, he struck upon the idea of transplanting goat testicles into men when a patient came to him to ask if he could fix someone who was "sexually weak". Brinkley responded by joking that the patient would have no problem if he had "a pair of those buck [goat] glands in you". The patient then begged Brinkley to try the operation, which Brinkley did, for $150. (The patient's son later told The Kansas City Star that Brinkley had in fact offered to pay his father "handsomely" if he'd go along with the experiment.)