The Peculiar Truth about the Doctor Who Treated Male Impotence with Goat Testicles
- Dan Spencer
- Apr 11, 2023
- 3 min read
Milford, Kansas, 1917: Dr. John R. Brinkley began offering a miracle cure for male impotence.
His technique was to surgically implant goat testicles into men’s scrotums.
Please take a moment to read that sentence again.
Impotent men from all over the world streamed to the tiny Kansas town to receive Brinkley’s treatment. None of them doubted the doctor’s claims or his pedigree.
In truth, however, John Brinkley had no legitimate degree in medicine.
The American medical profession during the early part of the 20th Century was poorly regulated and primitive compared to today.
Brinkley acquired his medical degree and license thanks to diploma mills, and he began his own practice in Milford, 80 miles west of Topeka.
He was the very definition of a quack. Even so, his surgical technique made him incredibly rich.
Brinkley’s clinic had live goats on the property. The animal’s testicles were removed, surgically inserted into the patients, and the men’s scrotal sacks were stitched up.
That was the entire procedure. The general public never questioned it.
Men who received the treatment praised the doctor. They claimed they could once again “fadoodle with the missus.”
Newspapers across the US ran ads for Brinkley’s technique. One ad caught the eye of the owner of the Los Angeles Times, Harry Chandler.
Chandler paid Brinkley to travel to California and perform the surgery on him. Which he did.
The doctor was fascinated with Chandler’s other business, radio station KHJ. Radio was in its infancy, and Brinkley wanted his own station. So he created one.
1923: KFKB in Milford, Kansas was on the air. Brinkley’s programming ran the gamut from live country music to gospel singers to poetry and weather reports.
Because it was located in the middle of the flat heartland, KFKB’s transmitting signal was uniquely strong. On good nights, people could listen all the way to the coasts.
Twice per day, Brinkley aired his Medical Question Box in which he answered letters supposedly sent by listeners. People wanted to know how to treat their various ailments. His answers were often quackery.
Then Brinkley began capitalizing on it. He instructed listeners to purchase by mail order his patented medicines, which were fake.
When the money started pouring in, Brinkley’s “medicines” were then distributed to participating pharmacies in five states.
The pharmacists suspected they were selling swill, but they needed the money.
Brinkley grew outrageously wealthy.
1928: Morris Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), called out Brinkley in print, naming him “a charlatan.”
Two years later, the Kansas Medical Board charged John Brinkley with fraud.
At trial, Fishbein explained the absurdity of Brinkley’s procedure; goat testicles were indeed used but they were never attached to anything. They were merely inserted inside men’s scrotums as if virility was passed on by osmosis.
The Kansas Medical Board revoked Brinkley’s license.
However, the surgeons whom Brinkley employed at his clinic were legitimate practitioners, so they continued performing his procedures. Business boomed.
Brinkley’s fans were enraged… not at their beloved doctor, but at the medical board.
They urged Brinkley to run for governor. So he did. At the last minute. As a write-in candidate.
And, thanks to the power and reach of his radio programs, he almost won.
Nearly 50,000 votes were thrown out because the name written in was misspelled or incomplete. If not for that technicality, Brinkley would have become governor of Kansas.
The doctor chose not to contest the outcome.
He ran a full campaign in 1932 and came in third place.
Brinkley’s radio station was shut down, too, so he bought a new operation just across the Tex-Mex border.
Radio station XER was on the air in Mexico, and its signal was even stronger.
Brinkley relocated to Del Rio, Texas, just across the river from his new radio staton. He had a license to practice medicine in the Lone Star State, and his clinic thrived there.
But he veered away from goat glands to focus more on the prostate. That proved trickier because his flimflam couldn’t shrink anyone’s prostate.
Morris Fishbein wasn’t done with the quack. He publicly called the man a charlatan, and Brinkley sued for defamation.
That proved to be a mistake. The lawyers piled on Brinkley, and the jury found for Fishbein.
Unmasked at last, malpractice lawsuits soon followed.
Then the Mexican government took over XER and shut down the radio station.
Brinkley’s career was ruined. He declared bankruptcy. His fortune was gone.
He was charged with fraud in Arkansas but never appeared in court due to poor health.
In May 1942, the infamous goat gland doctor died after a wave of quackery that spanned decades.
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