Goat Testicle Transplants: The Bizarre History

Quack doctors have made some INCREDIBLE promises throughout history, but what good would a goat testicle transplant do for you? In the early 20th century, John R. Brinkley became a sensation for - you guessed it - implanting goat's testicles into men. He promised virility and boosted fertility. Did it work? Did the law ever catch up with him for such outrageous claims? And what became of the people (and goats) who were involved in his operations? On today's episode, Kate is talking with Tim Hartford on his wonderful podcast, Cautionary Tales, created by Pushkin Industries, to find out more about this remarkable quack doctor. This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producers were Stuart Beckwith, Marilyn Rust and Charlotte Long. You can listen to Cautionary Tales https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/cautionary-tales wherever you get your podcasts. Cautionary Tales is a Pushkin Industries Production. For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com http://timharford.com/. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

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• 0:37Speaker 01

  Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost. We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. We're talking ghosts caught on camera. Demonic possessions. Cursed mirrors. Bigfoot. Poltergeists. Exorcisms. Near-death experiences. Unsolved mysteries. Missing persons. Each week, we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world. Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.

• 1:14Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are you, I am me, this is Betwixt the Sheet. And if you're a regular around here, you know what's coming. And if you're a newbie, well, just buckle up, because I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects that you should be an adult too. That is just our way of making sure that you feel safe and we are not liable for your trauma. We call that the Fair Do's Warning. Right, on with the show.

• 1:48Kate Lister?

  Good day to you, betwixters. I appreciate you joining me here in small-town America. It's the turn of the 20th century, and the strangest travelling medical show is about to take to the road. From the bed of a flatbed truck, this peculiar, charismatic fellow, John Brinkley, will put on a show that makes bold and outlandish claims. He will talk of miracle cures, of being able to stop impotence, and how to reverse aging, but really all he's doing is he's flogging coloured water. But, that doesn't stop him, and he will go on to have an astonishing medical career, taking the name of quack doctor to whole new levels as he pioneered the treatment of goat testicle transplants.

• 2:33Kate Lister?

  Not into other goats, no, no, into people. He was a consummate con man, who preyed on the fears and anxieties of his customers. He also utilised the media to push his message, and he almost got away with it. Wanna know more? Well, if you're as curious as I am to hear about this compelling quack and the weird work he carried out, step right this way.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  What do you look for in a man?

• 3:05Speaker 03

  Oh, money, of course.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.

• 3:09Speaker 03

  I make perfect compliments of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the button.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

• 3:24Speaker 04

  Goodness, what beautiful time! Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derek.

• 3:32Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheet, the history of sex scandal in society, with me, Kate Lister. History is littered with false prophets, taking all kinds of bizarre and disturbing forms. John Brinkley is very much in that vein. He promised the world and delivered, well, mm, check notes, goat testicle transplants. His is a story of wild medical claims, of showmanship and criminality, and a fair amount of tragedy thrown in. Not least for the poor goats. Won't somebody think of the goats in all of this? It's a fascinating tale, and one which I delved into recently with Tim Hartford on his wonderfully curious podcast, Cautionary Tales, created by our friends over at Pushkin.

• 4:17Kate Lister?

  Absolutely check that one out for more hair-raising stories from history. Right, scalpels and goats at the ready, Betwixters, let's do it.

• 4:29Speaker 05

  To guide us through the fantastical claims of Dr John R Brinkley and his no less fantastical life is Dr Kate Lister, host of one of my favourite podcasts, Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex, scandal and society. Kate, I am a huge fan. Welcome to Cautionary Tales.

• 4:48Kate Lister?

  Well, thank you very much for having me on. I'm always happy to talk about goat glands.

• 4:53Speaker 05

  I mean, the crossover between Betwixt the Sheets and Cautionary Tales is, well, it's not too hard to find.

• 5:00Kate Lister?

  No, this has been a long time coming, hasn't it?

• 5:02Speaker 05

  No pun intended, but yes, it really has, it really has. So I have other quacks to discuss with you in due course, but I am, I am very, very keen to hear more about Dr Brinkley. So if you will pardon the pun, his story is nuts.

• 5:19Kate Lister?

  He was a fucking lunatic, that's who he was.

• 5:23Speaker 05

  Okay, so I think we already gathered that, but give us the backstory. So, so before we get into these unusual treatments, so what was his early life like? Was there any sign of this interest in goat glands?

• 5:34Kate Lister?

  What we know about him is gathered from his own testimony and testimony of people that knew him and various historical records. But you've got to take everything with a pinch of salt when it comes to Brinkley, because he was the master of spin. He liked to tell people that he came from the rural mountain folk in Carolina. 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. 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?

• 6:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:09Kate Lister?

  He's born, he grows up quite poor, his parents die when he's young, and he's raised by aunts, an aunt and an uncle. And he gets married in his twenties. At some point, he works in an abattoir, which is where we think he first saw a goat and went, oh, I'll store that away for future use.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, I could use that, yes.

• 6:30Kate Lister?

  For some reason, he thought that a goat was the most hygienic animal. That's your first red flag, that one, isn't it?

• 6:36Speaker 05

  I mean, that's, I have all sorts of thoughts about goats, but hygienic is not the one that.

• 6:40Kate Lister?

  Doesn't leap to mind, does it?

• 6:42Speaker 05

  Maybe, maybe that's just my own ignorance.

• 6:44Kate Lister?

  Then 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, Sally Wick. And they go on the road as this kind of travelling 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 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.

• 7:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, and this was a huge thing. I, I, there's a, it's a famous economics paper. I'm an economist, so forgive me. There's a famous economics paper about the, the history of the market for snake oil. And, and it, it grew hugely during the, 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, you, you had to kind of, you had to get a crowd in order to sell them whatever it was that you were selling them. So you, you needed to attract attention and, you know, circus is a good way to attract attention.

• 7:51Kate Lister?

  It seems completely mad. I mean, would you take medical advice from a clown at a circus?

• 7:55Speaker 05

  I mean, I, nothing against clowns, but that, it wouldn't be my first port of call. But I guess when we think about the demand for what we might call unproven treatments today, they're being.

• 8:07Kate Lister?

  That's true.

• 8:08Speaker 05

  They're being sold on, on the TikTok, on YouTube. And again, it's attention. You've got an influencer, somebody you, you're paying attention to because they're doing interesting things. And then suddenly they're trying to sell you their latest goop or creams or pills. And it's not so different, but.

• 8:23Kate Lister?

  If he'd been around today, I think he would have been on TikTok, would Brinkley. But he was travelling 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.

• 8:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, okay, spoiler, he's not a doctor.

• 8:44Kate Lister?

  Something must have occurred to him, like, I'm treating all these people and I'm not a medical person at all.

• 8:49Speaker 05

  So he had no medical qualifications?

• 8:51Kate Lister?

  He had a can do attitude, Tim, is what he had. He had.

• 8:55Speaker 05

  That's what I wanted my doctors.

• 8:58Speaker 05

  Did he, I mean, did he claim to be a doctor or did he have any sort of qualifications at all?

• 9:01Kate Lister?

  Not at this point. And the qualifications that he does get are best described as dubious.

• 9:07Speaker 05

  Right.

• 9:07Kate Lister?

  So he's in Chicago and he tries to study and it's called the Chicago Bennett Medical School.

• 9:13Speaker 05

  I like eclectic medicine.

• 9:15Kate Lister?

  Doesn't that, that sounds, mm, mm, mm, okay, yeah. Eclectic, 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, and it's not an accredited college that he's 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. He tries to enroll in various other bogus institutions and they all kind of go, no.

• 9:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:45Kate Lister?

  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 that occasionally charlatans get exposed today because they've bought a PhD online.

• 10:00Speaker 05

  It's quite easily done.

• 10:01Kate Lister?

  It's very easily done.

• 10:03Speaker 05

  It turns out, okay. So he's got a fig leaf of a qualification. He's got, he's got a piece of paper, but he hasn't really gotten any serious training. And then he ends up in, in Milford, Kansas. So how did he end up there from Chicago?

• 10:15Kate Lister?

  When he's in Chicago, he ditches his wife, by the way, in between these two points and his children. He just, 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 centre in Chicago where he's basically injecting men with coloured water and telling them that this is good for their manly vigour. And the authorities 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.

• 10:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. And then, yeah, flu hits and he. Tense people.

• 11:00Kate Lister?

  He was, he was really popular.

• 11:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:02Kate Lister?

  I mean.

• 11:03Speaker 05

  A good bedside manner will get you a long way.

• 11:05Kate Lister?

  It will.

• 11:06Speaker 05

  And with flu, I mean, there's no, there was no flu vaccine.

• 11:09Kate Lister?

  No.

• 11:09Speaker 05

  I guess there's no treatment, so you just kind of like be nice to people and.

• 11:13Kate Lister?

  Be nice to people.

• 11:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:14Kate Lister?

  Chicken soup.

• 11:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:15Kate Lister?

  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 rural town. There's a few hundred people there and they're just thrilled to have a doctor.

• 11:28Speaker 05

  And then somehow he makes this leap from eclectic medicine. So basically coloured water and some herbs and spices and that. I mean, that's, that's pretty ordinary. It's a lot of people doing that at this point in history. He leaps into the goat gland game.

• 11:44Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 11:45Speaker 05

  I'm going to regret asking this. So I know that there are different accounts of the first operation, but we know that he did in fact implant goat glands. So what, I really am going to regret asking this. Where did he put them?

• 11:58Kate Lister?

  Well, he put them into the testicles, into the scrotums of men. And there were descriptions of the surgery that he did. So he would.

• 12:07Speaker 05

  So the scrotums being stretchy, there's, there's room for four testicles rather than two.

• 12:11Kate Lister?

  You've pretty much got it. So he had, he had this idea that you had to use the goat's gland. So within 20 minutes of, of severing it. So he would basically castrate 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 victim's scrotum with local anaesthetic. 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 supply. He wasn't doing any of that.

• 12:47Speaker 05

  He's just jamming it in.

• 12:48Kate Lister?

  Jamming a bollock in and then he stitches it up. That's what he was doing.

• 12:54Speaker 05

  Can't be good for you.

• 12:55Kate Lister?

  He didn't 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.

• 13:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:05Kate Lister?

  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.

• 13:16Speaker 05

  Right.

• 13:17Kate Lister?

  And he was doing it with monkey testicles.

• 13:18Speaker 05

  I don't know if that makes it better or worse.

• 13:19Kate Lister?

  I don't know. I don't know. But you could, the thinking.

• 13:22Speaker 05

  This 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 and doesn't necessarily have any more evidence. They've just got more authority.

• 13:33Kate Lister?

  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 now. I was like, I was with you right up until that.

• 13:52Speaker 05

  It feels like Spinal Tap, four testicles.

• 13:53Kate Lister?

  Four testicles.

• 13:54Speaker 05

  Is more than two.

• 13:56Kate Lister?

  So that was the theory behind it. So you've got Serge Voronov doing it with monkey glands. Apparently, he wasn't inserting the entire gland. He was cutting slivers off and then stitching it up inside men's scrotums. He at least was medically trained and had some gloss of pseudoscience with it. Brinkley had nothing. He just had a scalpel and a goat and decided that this was what he was gonna, he was gonna do. And he was grafting the entire testicle gland in there.

• 14:28Speaker 05

  Now, the thing that I find most astonishing about this is that a load of men seem really keen to have this done.

• 14:34Kate Lister?

  It was hugely popular.

• 14:35Speaker 05

  Queuing around the block.

• 14:36Kate Lister?

  It was hugely popular. The gland therapy, as it was called at the time, was really big in the 20s and 30s. You could even buy like rejuvenating face cream that claimed it was made from glands. It was like the thing because it was sort of like a pseudo hormone treatment. And the absolute apex of it was having actual testicles grafted. It would have been amazing if they could have done it with humans, but they realised pretty, there's some ethical issues around that one. So they did it with monkeys. Brinkley did it with goats.

• 15:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. And they were advertising the goat gland baby and.

• 15:11Kate Lister?

  Yes. This, so apparently the first person that came to Brinkley and went, would you please put a goat testicle inside mine? And he went, oh, I'll have to have a think about that. And then eventually went, yeah, all right then. So he said that he wanted to do this because he was impotent and his wife wanted to get pregnant. And lo and behold, his wife becomes pregnant, the baby is born, they call him Billy, of course they do.

• 15:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:33Kate Lister?

  And it's hailed as the first goat gland baby because if there's one thing Brinkley is amazing at, it's self-publicity.

• 15:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:41Kate Lister?

  So he uses this as an opportunity to launch this incredible treatment and this young boy Billy is used as the definitive proof. Of like, look what can happen and it's peddled as this cure, it'll get rid of impotence, it'll pep you up, it'll rejuvenate your sex life. And if you can imagine how popular this is, just cast your mind back to when Viagra was launched.

• 16:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:01Kate Lister?

  Right. At least Viagra fucking works. People lost their minds, didn't they? There was reports of doctors having to stamp prescriptions with a rubber stamp because they couldn't, the hand was cramping from signing so many of them. So that's how popular Viagra was. This was their Viagra.

• 16:17Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 16:17Kate Lister?

  And they really thought that it was going to work. So he has queues around the block and not just from the local community. There was Chinese patients who came to see him that had been travelling around the world and thought they would just stop off in Kansas to have goat testicles put inside themselves. And it becomes this huge media sensation.

• 16:35Speaker 05

  I suppose this is one of the reasons why nerds like me are very keen on randomised trials. Because people are able to convince themselves that all sorts of things work and the placebo effect can be very important. I mean, impotence is sometimes just in your head.

• 16:51Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 16:51Speaker 05

  Sometimes it's got a physical cause, sometimes it's just you're just like, you're overthinking it.

• 16:55Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 16:56Speaker 05

  And I can well imagine that this guy went home from his goat gland operation, full of confidence, and suddenly he could get it up.

• 17:03Kate Lister?

  It's got all the hallmarks. Like when they look at placebo effect, they've also discovered, and I'm sure you're aware of this, that it's more effective if the person administering the treatment looks like a doctor, has a white coat, calls themselves doctor. If there's some level of surgical intervention, we're more inclined to believe that it'll have a bigger placebo effect. 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 goat's testicle. So, I mean, I am unaware if there is any medical benefit whatsoever to doing this. I'm going to go out on a limb and say, no.

• 17:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. Unlike you, Kate, I'm not a doctor.

• 17:40Kate Lister?

  I'm not a doctor.

• 17:40Speaker 05

  Of any description.

• 17:42Kate Lister?

  I'm not a medical doctor, but I do feel quite confident in saying that the only benefit must have been a placebo effect. Plus Brinkley talking crap. Like, it's all coming back through him, isn't it? He's not going to give the testimonials of the people who wander back in going, my scrotum's gone purple.

• 17:58Speaker 05

  Kate, you can't argue with results. Baby Billy was born.

• 18:01Kate Lister?

  Baby Billy.

• 18:02Speaker 05

  The first goat gland baby. Customers are happy. I can't imagine that anything is going to go wrong. And the publicity was incredible.

• 18:11Kate Lister?

  He was a master at it, as all con men are. But I've got in front of me a copy of his advertisement for Billy, the first goat gland.

• 18:20Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 18:21Kate Lister?

  Baby. So if I show that to you.

• 18:23Speaker 05

  Oh, wow. I'm looking at, oh, what a cute baby.

• 18:26Kate Lister?

  It doesn't look at all like a goat, does it?

• 18:27Speaker 05

  I mean, a toddler, I guess, rather than a baby, but it looks about one. But yes, Kansas surgeon uses goat glands to cure sterility. First goat gland baby. And they called him.

• 18:39Kate Lister?

  Billy.

• 18:39Speaker 05

  Billy. Dr. John R. Brinkley and Billy. Amazing.

• 18:45Kate Lister?

  Hmm. Doesn't he look like a serial killer? Don't you think? Like, somebody that would...

• 18:49Speaker 05

  Brinkley or Billy? I think it's a bit harsh on Billy. Billy looks rather charming.

• 18:52Kate Lister?

  I think he just, like, he looks...

• 18:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's got a lot of forehead, quite, quite a weird hairstyle, and it's the round glasses.

• 18:59Kate Lister?

  It's the round glasses, isn't it? He's got those serial killer glasses on. And he was charging people, well, it's about $750, but in today's money, that's well over 10 grand to do this.

• 19:09Speaker 05

  Yes. Off the top of my head, I would say that's probably a year's income. Depends exactly how you measure it.

• 19:14Kate Lister?

  Can I just show how desperate people were for this treatment, though?

• 19:17Speaker 05

  Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, and people today would spend a great deal for fertility treatment, for example. You know, it's enormously important, of course. But you kind of would hope it worked.

• 19:28Kate Lister?

  And it's, but the thing about the story as well, it's really interesting about how much we place trust in people. When I was going back over the story to come and talk to you, I was thinking, like, how to get away with it. And then I was thinking about, how often do you ask someone who says they're a doctor after a doctor? Like, how often if you go and get some treatment, or you go to see your GP, or you make an appointment with a therapist or whatever, and it says doctor? Like, honestly, how many... Do we actually look up their credentials?

• 19:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:53Kate Lister?

  Or do we just go, well, he's a doctor?

• 19:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, and there was a case quite recently of a doctor who was struck off and kept kind of practising as a doctor and sort of fudging it and people wouldn't ask. And he didn't out and out lie, but he presented his credentials in a way that would be easy to misunderstand. And of course, you also have a lot of influencers who will tell you not to believe what the doctors tell you.

• 20:16Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 20:16Speaker 05

  They know better.

• 20:17Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 20:17Speaker 05

  And who knows, maybe sometimes they do.

• 20:19Kate Lister?

  Often they do, but they're always trying to wrestle that away from the people. I mean, there's a lot of things about protected terms and things in there, like doctor. I'm not a doctor of medicine, I'm a doctor of history, so I'm really careful to only use that title when I'm talking about history, because it could confer an expertise that perhaps I don't have.

• 20:39Speaker 05

  If you're on a plane and then they come forward and say, is there a doctor on the flight? You don't stand up?

• 20:43Kate Lister?

  Unless they'd want poetry reciting to them, no. Unless they want me to talk to them about the Battle of the Somme.

• 20:49Speaker 05

  Who does not want poetry reciting?

• 20:57Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Tim and John and his goats after this short break.

• 21:14Kate Lister?

  Autumn is underway at last, which means the nights are closing in and everything in nature feels like it's just slowing down. Except us, of course. For most of us, me included, the world still has a lot of demands on us that can feel like a lot to deal with. There will be a time in all of our lives when we could use therapy, but often when you try to do that, it's still way harder than it should be. Finding a therapist is hard enough, but finding one who actually takes your insurance? That's where most online therapy platforms fall short. Many don't work with insurance at all, which means you're stuck paying the full cost out of pocket or paying for an expensive monthly subscription.

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• 24:01Speaker 05

  So Kate, we're 100 years ago, the early 1920s. At this point, just how big was Brinkley's goat gland transplant operation at this stage?

• 24:12Kate Lister?

  It was big and it was growing all the time because the more he did it, the more he self-publicised, 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 their progress. So some guy from the LA Times, Henry Chandler, came down and he, I know, I know, see, that's commitment to journalism.

• 24:42Speaker 05

  I've met a couple of newspaper editors, I'm not sure they'd go for the goat gland.

• 24:45Kate Lister?

  Do they need more testicles?

• 24:46Speaker 05

  Not really, no.

• 24:48Kate Lister?

  But he would do things like that and then he would, then he's got major newspapers writing about him. And his absolute coup de grace is he leapt into radio and he utilised that in such a powerful way. He set up his own radio station, it was KFKB and...

• 25:08Speaker 05

  Kansas first, Kansas best.

• 25:11Kate Lister?

  That's it, Kansas first, Kansas best.

• 25:12Speaker 05

  But it's very much, it's the TikTok of the 1920s, right? It's, this is the new cutting edge way of communicating.

• 25:19Kate Lister?

  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. You're into very dubious territory here again. So readers from all over the country would write in about their medical complaints.

• 25:43Speaker 05

  So all over the country? I thought it was a local radio station.

• 25:45Kate Lister?

  It had a really big reach.

• 25:47Speaker 05

  Right.

• 25:47Kate Lister?

  It wasn't listened to just in Kansas, is that the power of this thing was enormous.

• 25:52Speaker 05

  So he's a huge success. That sort of success must start to attract scrutiny.

• 25:58Kate Lister?

  Well, it does. See, this is the thing, is it's not local radio. It was supposed to be so other people are listening in. And you've got a situation where Mr 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. So whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. There's warnings going off there. But it was again massively, massively popular. But you can imagine other doctors, real doctors with actual credentials, listening into this and going.

• 26:28Speaker 05

  Hang on a minute.

• 26:29Kate Lister?

  Hang on a minute. 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 Fishbein, 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 this was his life's work. So he was on to Brinkley pretty quickly.

• 26:56Speaker 05

  And he didn't hold back, did he?

• 26:58Kate Lister?

  He did not. He did not.

• 27:01Speaker 05

  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 victimise people and to enrich himself, which, I don't know, seems fair enough.

• 27:13Kate Lister?

  It's 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 in the wider community as well. So to begin with, Maurice is this sort of lone voice. It's like, oh, you meanie. They're trying to take away our young, successful doctor. And of course, the Milford residents love it because it's bringing loads of money to the town. It's bringing loads of business into the town.

• 27:38Speaker 05

  So they don't want to challenge it.

• 27:40Kate Lister?

  They don't want to challenge it. Shut up, shut up.

• 27:42Speaker 05

  I mean, I found this, when when Cautionary Tales did the story of the radium dial company and these these poor young women who were giving themselves radium poisoning, working, painting this radioactive paint on watch faces 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 deny everything, but their local community ostracized them.

• 28:07Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 28:07Speaker 05

  Because they were like, you are going to shut down this factory. It's the 1930s, it's a tough time economically. You're going to destroy everyone's jobs just because you're moaning about the fact that your jaw's fallen off or something. So they were so lonely because the the local community would not back them against the radium dial company. And it seems that we've got a similar thing going on here with Brinkley.

• 28:29Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 28:29Speaker 05

  That, yeah, okay, fine, maybe the goat glands work, maybe they don't, but this is jobs.

• 28:34Kate Lister?

  This is jobs, this is income, and it's also put Milford on the map, and it just seems to be great.

• 28:40Speaker 05

  The goat gland capital of the United States.

• 28:42Kate Lister?

  Isn't it fabulous? And there were loads of people out there really think that he's helped them. There are many others that did not. He was sued at least 12 times in the 1930s because unsurprisingly, these operations were not a success.

• 28:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:56Kate Lister?

  There were people having infections, there were people that died, actually. So he was sued and kind of managed to bat it away and hush it up each time. But Maurice was not going to let it go. He was extremely angry. And so he starts exposing him in very highly publicized news articles, and then more people are kind of asking questions of like, hang on a minute, what do you mean he's not a doctor?

• 29:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:18Kate Lister?

  That kind of thing.

• 29:19Speaker 05

  So but if if someone's going to take him down, it seems like it's going to have to come from the outside.

• 29:23Kate Lister?

  Maurice Fishbein was the man that made it his mission to take Brinkley down.

• 29:28Speaker 05

  So if Brinkley's going to be taken down, it's not going to come from the local community, it's going to come from outside, from some kind of authorities. Do the authorities do anything?

• 29:37Kate Lister?

  They do eventually. I mean, they have to get involved because it's, he's practicing medicine without a license, he's operating on people with no qualifications or reason to do this at all. So eventually, yeah.

• 29:49Speaker 05

  That's apparently frowned upon, is it?

• 29:50Kate Lister?

  It is frowned upon, even in 1930s. It's it's cause for people to have a think about it. So in 1930, he was called before the Kansas Medical Board to face 11 charges. It's a fairly cut and dried case, isn't it? It's like, can you show us your medical certificate? And then he's just holding up a piece of paper with doctor written in crayon on it. Like what? So he's desperately trying to convince me he's a doctor because he's got this junk medical certificate.

• 30:18Speaker 05

  So when the Kansas Medical Board looked into his qualifications, I mean, what sort of investigation did they do?

• 30:24Kate Lister?

  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 to come and watch him do one of his procedures.

• 30:38Speaker 05

  And they came?

• 30:39Kate Lister?

  And they came, of course they came. They were like, I mean, what? Just to have a wander around in that head of like, what did you think was going to happen? Obviously, they come in and they watch it and they watch him botching this thing and unsterilised equipment. And it's just in his.

• 30:54Speaker 05

  And also, you're literally just putting goat balls.

• 30:56Kate Lister?

  You're just putting goat balls into somebody. That's what you're doing here. And then stitching it up and patting them on the back and saying, off you go. It's worth saying as well here that the boy goats survived, but the girl goats that he took ovaries out of to graft into women did not. So it wasn't good for the goats either.

• 31:13Speaker 05

  Well, no one think of the goats?

• 31:15Kate Lister?

  No, just somebody, justice for the goats. That's all that I'm saying. They often get left out of this particular story. So representatives come down and they watch him literally sewing a goat's testicle into a human being. At which point he's like, ta-da, and is genuinely shocked that they go, holy. And they revoke, no more for you. No, you are done.

• 31:37Speaker 05

  I see that his licence to practise was revoked on the grounds of gross immorality and unprofessional conduct.

• 31:43Kate Lister?

  Yes, you can't get much firmer than that, can you?

• 31:45Speaker 05

  No, you can't. Okay, he's lost his licence to practise medicine, potentially a disaster. Although I struggle to understand how he ever had a licence to practise medicine in the first place.

• 31:55Kate Lister?

  I've wondered that as well. I was like, he can't have had a licence to practise medicine.

• 31:59Speaker 05

  Anyway, the authorities like, you're not a doctor.

• 32:02Kate Lister?

  We're not having one.

• 32:02Speaker 05

  Stop doing this. He's still got the radio, though. He's still got that potential cash cow.

• 32:06Kate Lister?

  He does, and it's a big cash cow as well. And he's still got his Dr Brinkley show on the road and he's still offering up medical advice. And people are still writing in and he's. Still peddling his quack cures. And it's all right for a while, but our mate Maurice Fishbein hasn't forgotten about him. And the pressure is now coming on the Kansas authorities to investigate whether it is ethical or not to have a disbared lunatic offering up medical advice.

• 32:37Speaker 05

  Yes, and the Federal Radio Commission get involved in the end. Spoil sports.

• 32:42Kate Lister?

  Spoil sports. And but again, it's 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 is he's administering care to actual sick people. They're writing in with things that really are wrong with them. And he's.

• 33:00Speaker 05

  And he's got no idea what he's talking about.

• 33:02Kate Lister?

  Not a clue, not a clue.

• 33:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:04Kate Lister?

  So eventually they have to pull the plug on it. And no more surgery and no more radio for you.

• 33:14Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Tim and John and his goats after this short break.

• 33:34Kate Lister?

  Hello, Betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost. We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. We're talking ghosts caught on camera. Demonic possessions. Cursed mirrors. Bigfoot. Poltergeists. Exorcisms. Near death experiences. Unsolved mysteries. Missing persons. Each week we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world. Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.

• 34:51Speaker 05

  So things are not looking good for Dr John R Brinkley because he's not a doctor anymore.

• 34:56Kate Lister?

  He's not.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  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. What's he gonna do?

• 35:06Kate Lister?

  If it 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.

• 35:23Speaker 05

  Who would have thought that a failed con man would be attracted by politics?

• 35:26Kate Lister?

  It was the olden days, Tim. We'll never see the like again. So he runs twice to be the governor of Kansas.

• 35:35Speaker 05

  That's a big job.

• 35:35Kate Lister?

  It's a big job.

• 35:36Speaker 05

  He's not just running for mayor. Okay, governor of Kansas.

• 35:39Kate Lister?

  As we've discovered, not being remotely qualified for a position is no obstacle to Brinkley. He just can do attitude.

• 35:47Speaker 05

  And so he's got all the stars of his KFKB radio station who can kind of shill for him and support him. And how does it go? I mean, is he crushed?

• 35:58Kate Lister?

  Not nearly as epically as you would hope that he would be. In fact, the first time he does this, it's a reasonably close call. I think eventually he came in third, I think. But there was a law that said if the votes that are cast don't specifically match the name that he's running under, they will be discounted. So they had this rule in place where if the vote didn't match exactly what had been submitted, which was John R Brinkley, then the vote would be discounted. So if anyone wrote something like 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.

• 36:34Speaker 05

  Right. I mean, I'm not that sad that he didn't become governor of Kansas, but at the same time, that doesn't actually seem that fair. I mean, if someone-

• 36:40Kate Lister?

  It's tough, isn't it?

• 36:41Speaker 05

  If someone writes down Doc Brinkley, it's pretty obvious who they meant. But anyway, so he doesn't win in 1930 because of all those votes for Doc Brinkley and John Brinkley. And anyway, he doesn't get in. He nearly makes it. He tries again in 1932,

• 36:55Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 36:55Speaker 05

  loses again. Can't be it for Brinkley.

• 36:59Kate Lister?

  Well, the second time that he ran, it did even more damage to his public image because his opponents realised that they could make a mockery of him, and they did. They held him up as just this crank, lunatic.

• 37:11Speaker 05

  The goat ball guy.

• 37:12Kate Lister?

  Goat ball guy who's been disbarred and discredited and da da da da. So it created even more.

• 37:18Speaker 05

  You would think that would have done more damage earlier, but okay.

• 37:20Kate Lister?

  Wouldn't you?

• 37:21Speaker 05

  Eventually, they figure out that's an attack line.

• 37:23Kate Lister?

  Eventually. So he upsticks and he moves to Del Rio, Texas, which is way down there on the border, where he tries again to practise medicine, only this time he takes an increased interest in people's prostate glands. He's not monkey testically, goat testically anymore. That's all behind him.

• 37:43Speaker 05

  Why do I think that's worse? Somehow, I think that's even worse, but okay.

• 37:47Kate Lister?

  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 vigour, it'll rejuvenate you, da da da da da. He gets another radio show.

• 38:04Speaker 05

  Another radio show.

• 38:04Kate Lister?

  Another radio show, which again proves to be incredibly popular. 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.

• 38:18Speaker 05

  But the border is important there, right? Because he can put the radio transmitter in Mexico.

• 38:23Kate Lister?

  Yeah, so he gets around the American authorities that way, because he's not allowed to do it in America, but in Mexico, even though they can hear it in America, it's in Mexico.

• 38:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, so he's got, 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. Nice trick.

• 38:43Kate Lister?

  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.

• 38:49Speaker 05

  But it must have been a problem now, surely, if a patient goes to Brinkley and it doesn't work, they are going to be less shy about complaining, surely?

• 38:59Kate Lister?

  Yeah, I'm sure that they were. But these things happen, don't they, when people are exposed as charlatans and quacks or as bad people? Is you do get the hardcore, diehard fans, the ride or die people, who just refuse to believe anything bad about them at all.

• 39:16Speaker 05

  So he resurrects his career, if indeed it ever really went away. By 1938, he's got another hospital in Arkansas.

• 39:25Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 39:25Speaker 05

  He's living the high life. He's got mansions, he's got yachts, Cadillacs, luxury holidays. Nothing can go wrong for Doc Brinkley.

• 39:33Kate Lister?

  Yeah, but Maurice Fishbone hadn't forgotten about him.

• 39:35Speaker 05

  Oh, right. His old nemesis.

• 39:37Kate Lister?

  His old nemesis. And of course, because Brinkley can't keep quiet and stay off the radar, Fishbone is just like, right, I'll have you. And he publishes a number of exposes, calling him a quack and a charlatan. And Brinkley, to defend himself against this, decides that he's going to sue him for libel.

• 39:55Speaker 05

  Bold move.

• 39:56Kate Lister?

  Don't do it if what the person is saying is perfectly true.

• 40:01Speaker 05

  Because it all then gets laid out in court, presumably.

• 40:03Kate Lister?

  All of it, all of it gets laid out in court. The monkey goat glands, the unsterilised equipment, the operating while drunk, the fact that 42 people that we know of died from these awful operations because of infection and god knows what else. And how many goats died?

• 40:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:20Kate Lister?

  Justice for the goats.

• 40:21Speaker 05

  I think, I think we're probably going to leave with the 42 people dying.

• 40:23Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 40:23Speaker 05

  That's my suggestion, but yes.

• 40:25Kate Lister?

  Fine, fair enough.

• 40:26Speaker 05

  But that's not good for Brinkley.

• 40:28Kate Lister?

  None of it's good for Brinkley. It all gets laid out. Obviously, the court finds in Fishbone's favour.

• 40:33Speaker 05

  I love the jury verdict is that Brinkley should be considered a charlatan and a quack in the ordinary, well-understood meaning of those words.

• 40:42Kate Lister?

  Mic drop.

• 40:43Speaker 05

  Perfect. So he loses the case, he gets sued, and then, bad day at the office, the IRS sue him for tax fraud.

• 40:52Kate Lister?

  Yeah, because he wasn't paying his taxes. Of course he wasn't.

• 40:54Speaker 05

  Who would have thought?

• 40:55Kate Lister?

  Who would have thought?

• 40:56Speaker 05

  And then the post office sue him for mail fraud.

• 40:58Kate Lister?

  Yep. It's like shark circling, isn't it? And like, once somebody's made the first bite, is there all going in?

• 41:04Speaker 05

  Right. So this is the end of the 1930s. It sounds like it's basically the end for Brinkley's career.

• 41:11Kate Lister?

  Pretty much. All avenues have been cut off to 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. So he dies only four years after this. His health is worsening the whole time, and he has a series of heart attacks. Dies alone, penniless and in disgrace.

• 41:29Speaker 05

  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.

• 41:46Kate Lister?

  A wise move.

• 41:47Speaker 05

  But who knows, maybe there are even broader lessons to draw. What do you take from all this?

• 41:51Kate Lister?

  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 peddling all manner of lotions and potions and pills and powders, claiming to do this, that and the other, and it doesn't do anything of the sort. I think check your credentials as well. Is it like look into the background of 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.

• 42:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it is amazing how much gets sold basically by influencers now. It's on YouTube, it's on TikTok. And actually, the main reason why people buy it is because, well, they like the influencer. They, you know, they find them impressive. They think they're cool. And that's enough. And actually, quite often, that probably is enough, but not necessarily. Certainly not when it gets to the goat glands.

• 42:42Kate Lister?

  No, like if you're just talking about a face cream or, you know, protein powders or various teas, I guess, no, you should never tell lies. And it's not good when people are overselling stuff, but at least that's not going to cause irreparable damage.

• 42:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, I mean, I suppose it depends. It depends what's in the face cream or the protein powders.

• 43:02Kate Lister?

  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.

• 43:08Speaker 05

  All in favour of actual evidence.

• 43:10Kate Lister?

  Evidence.

• 43:11Speaker 05

  Kate, this has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me. What should we call this? I mean, betwixt the cautionary sheets?

• 43:18Kate Lister?

  Betwixt the cautionary tales.

• 43:21Speaker 05

  Something. Kate Lister, thank you so much.

• 43:23Kate Lister?

  Thank you.

• 43:30Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Tim for having me. And don't forget to check out his amazing podcast, Cautionary Tales. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you want us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hi, then you can email us at [email protected]. Coming up, we've got episodes on Valentine's Day in ancient Rome and the dark history of the body mass index. This podcast was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith, Charlotte Long and Marilyn Rust. Join me again, betwixt the sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost. We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. We're talking ghosts caught on camera. Demonic possessions. Cursed mirrors. Bigfoot. Poltergeist. Exorcisms. Near death experiences. Unsolved mysteries. Missing persons. Each week, we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world. Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.