Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Goat Testicle Transplants: The Bizarre History

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

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 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.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 survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister, you are you, I am me. This is Betwix 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 adultery way covering a range of adults of adults and 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. Good day to you, but Twixters, 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 impudence 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. Not into other goats, no, no, into people. He was a consummate con man who preyed on the fears and anxiety. 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 as curious as I am to hear about this compelling quack

and the weird work he carried out, step right this way. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the button. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

Goodness, my beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, dearie. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, 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, check notes, goat testicle transplants. His is a story of wild medical clans. 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. Absolutely check that one out for more hair-raising stories from history. Right, scalples and goats at the ready betwixters, let's do it. 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. Well, thank you very much for having me on. I'm always happy to talk about goat glands. I mean, the crossover between Betwixt the Sheets and Cautionary Tales is, It's not too hard to find. This has been a long time coming, hasn't it? 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 very, very keen to hear more about Dr. Brinkley. So if you will pardon a pun, his story is nuts. He was a fucking lunatic. That's who he was. Okay. So I think we already gathered that. But give us the backstory.

So before we get into these unusual treatments, so what was his early life like? Was there any sign of this interest in goat lands? 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 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 he. 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? 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 20s.

At some point he works in an abattoir, which is where we think he first saw a goat and went, I'll store that away for future use. Yeah, I could use that, yes. For some reason he thought that a goat was the most hygienic animal. That's your first red flag, that one, isn't it? I mean, I have all sorts of thoughts about goats, but hygienic is not the one that... It doesn't leap to mind, does it?

Maybe that's just my own ignorance. 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 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 nonsense and rubbish. But they were pretty good at it. Yeah. And this was a huge thing. There's a famous economics paper. I'm an economist, so forgive me. There's a famous economics paper about the history of the market for Snaecoyle. And it grew hugely during the period we're discussing.

So the late 1800s and then the first half of the 20th century, huge market. And a lot of it involved circuses. So 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 needed to attract attention. And, you know, circus is a good way to attract attention. It seems completely mad. I mean, would you take medical advice from a clown at a circus? I mean, nothing against clowns, but it wouldn't be my first port of call.

No. But I guess when we think about the demand for what we might call unproven treatments today, they're being sold on the TikTok, on YouTube, and again, it's attention. You've got an influencer, somebody 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. It's true. so different. If he'd been around today, I think he would have been on TikTok, with 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. Yeah. Well, okay. Spoiler.

He's not a doctor. Something must have occurred to him. Like, I'm treating all these people. And I'm not a medical person at all. So he had no medical qualifications. Can-do attitude, Tim, is what he had. He had plucked my doctors. Did he, I mean, did he claim to be a doctor, or did he have any sort of qualifications at all?

Not at this point. And the qualifications that he does get are best described as dubious. Right. So he's in Chicago, and he tries to study, and it's called the Chicago Bennett Medical School. I like eclectic. I like eclectic medicine. It doesn't that, that sounds, mm-hmm, 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. 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 no. 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 it's quite easily done it's very easily 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 when he's in chicago 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 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. Yeah. And then, yeah, flu hits and he attends people through the... He was really popular. Yeah. I mean... A good bedside manner will get you a long way.

And with flu. I mean, there's no there was no flu vaccine. I guess there's no treatment. So you just kind of like, be nice to people and... Be nice to people. Yeah. Chicken soup. 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 rural town. There's a few hundred people there. And they're just thrilled to have a doctor. And then somehow he makes this leap from eclectic medicine. So basically, colored water and some herbs and spices. I mean, that's pretty ordinary. There's a lot of people doing that at this point in history. He leaps into the goat gland game.

Yeah. 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? 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. So there's scrotums being stretchy. There's room for four testicles rather than two. You've pretty much got it. So he had this idea that you had to use the goat's gland. So within 20 minutes 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 anesthetic. 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. And he wasn't doing any of that. He's just jamming a bollock in. And then he stitches it up. That's what he was doing. Can't be good for you. 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. Yeah. 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 was doing it with monkey testicles. I don't know if that makes it better or worse. I don't know. I don't know. But you could, the thinking is, this is part of the story, actually, which is that the, 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. 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 falling apart quite quickly now. I was like, I was with you right up until that. I feel like spinal tap. Four testicles. It's more than two. 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 going to do and he was grafting the entire testicle gland in there. Now the thing that I find most astonishing about this is that a load of men seem really keen to have this done. It was hugely popular. Killing around the block. It was hugely popular. The gland therapy, as it was called at the time, was really big in the 20s and 30s. You 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. It would have been amazing if they could have done it with humans, but they realized pretty, there's some ethical issues around that one. So they did it with monkeys. Brinkley did it with goats. Yeah. And they were advertising the goat gland baby. Yes.

It's 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 it 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. And it's hailed as the first goat glam baby because if there's one thing Brinkley is amazing at its self-publicity. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Right. At least Viagra fucking works. People lost their minds. Yeah. There was reports of doctors having to stamp prescriptions with a rubber stature. 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. 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. I suppose this is one of the reasons why nerds like me are very keen on random.

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. Sometimes it's got a physical cause. Sometimes it's just, you're overthinking it. 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. It's got all the hallmarks. 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, call them that cells a doctor. If there's some level of surgical intervention, we're more inclined to believe, 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. Yeah. Unlike you, Kate, I'm not a doctor. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a doctor. 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 mud scrotum's gone purple. Kate, you can't argue with results. Baby Billy was born. Baby Billy the first goat gland baby. Customers are happy. I can't imagine that anything is going to go wrong. And the publicity was incredible.

He was a master at it, as all conmen are. But I've got in front of me a copy of his advertisement for Billy the first goat gland baby. So if I show that to you. Oh, wow. I'm looking at it. Oh, what a cute baby. It doesn't look at all like a goat, does it? 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 Billy Dr John R. Brinkley and Billy Amazing

Doesn't he look like a serial killer Don't you think Brinkley or Billy I think it's a bit harsh on Billy He looks rather charming He just like he looks Yeah he's got A lot of forehead

Quite quite a weird hairstyle And it's the round glasses It's the round glasses He's got the serial killer glasses Yeah He was charging people Well it's about $750 But in today's money

that's well over 10 grand to do this. Yes. Off the top of my head, I would say that's probably a year's income. It depends exactly how you measure it. Can I just show how desperate people were for this treatment, though? Yeah. But yeah, I mean, 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. But the thing about the story is, 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 do you get away with it? And then I was thinking about how often do you ask someone who says they're a doctor if they're 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 of us actually look up their credentials? Or do we just go, well, it's a doctor?

Yeah. And there was a case quite recently of a doctor who was struck off and kept kind of practicing 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. Yes. They know better. And who knows? Maybe sometimes they do.

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, isn't it? 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. 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? Unless they'd want poetry reciting to them, no. Unless they want me to talk to them about the Battle of a Song. Who does not want poetry reciting? I'll be back with Tim and John and his goats after this short break. So Kate, we were 100 years ago, the early 1920s. At this point, just how big was Brinkley. his goat gland transplant operation at this stage?

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 their progress. So some guy from the L.A. Times, Henry Chandler, came down, I know, I know. See, that's commitment to journalism.

I've met a couple of newspaper editors. I'm not sure they'd go for the go gland. Do they need more testicles? Really not. 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 KF, KB. and... Kansas first, Kansas best. That's it. Kansas first, Kansas best. But it's very much, it's the TikTok of the 1920s, right? This is the new cutting edge way of communicating. And it really was cutting edge as well. And he would have local acts and local music groups come on and do that 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. here again. So readers from all over the country would write in about their medical complaints. So all over the country? I thought it was a local radio station. It had a really big reach. It wasn't listened to just in Kansas. The power of this thing was enormous. So he's a huge success. That sort of success must start to attract scrutiny. Well, it does. See, this is a 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, warnings going off there. But it was, again, massively, massively popular. But you can imagine other doctors, wheel doctors, with actual credentials, listening into this and going, hang on a minute. Hang on a minute.

Just give me a second. So he's getting way, way too big for his boots and he's making loads of money. And his nemesis was an actual proper doctor, Morris Fishbine, 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. And he didn't hold back, did he? He did not.

He did not. Got one quote in front of me says he described Brinkley as a charlatan of the rankist sort, whose radio station was being used to victimise people and to enrich himself, which, I don't know, seems fair enough. 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, Morris, it's this sort of lone voice. It's like, oh, you're meanie, 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. So they don't want to challenge this. They don't want to challenge it. Shut up, shut up. I mean, I found this.

When cautionary tales 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 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. Yeah. 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 jaws fallen off or something. So they were so lonely because 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. Yeah.

That, yeah, okay, fine. Maybe the goat glands work. Maybe they don't. But this is jobs. This is jobs. This is income. And it's also put Milford on the map. And it just seems to be great. The goat gland capital of the United States. 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 for success. 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. time, but Morris was not going to let it go. He was extremely angry. And so he starts exposing him in very highly publicised 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. That kind of thing. So, but if someone's going to

take him down, it seems like it's going to have to come from the outside. Morris Fishbine was the man that made his mission to take Brinkley down. So if Brinkley is 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, it's to do the authorities, do anything? They do eventually. I mean, they have to get involved because he's practicing medicine without a licence.

He's operating on people with no qualifications or reason to do this at all. So eventually, yeah. That's apparently frowned upon, is it? It is frowned upon, even in 1930s. 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 dry. case, isn't it? It's like, can you show us your medical certificate? And he's just holding up a piece of paper with a doctor written and 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. So when the Kansas Medical Board looked into his qualifications, I mean, what sort of investigation did they do? 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. And they came? And they came. Of course they came. They were like, I mean, 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 unstaralised equipment and it's just in his... And also you're literally just putting goat balls. You're just putting goat balls into somebody. That's what you're. you're doing here and then stitching it up and patting him 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. Will no one think of the goats?

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 testicle into a human being, at which point he's like, ta-da. And it's genuinely shocked that they go, holy, and they revoked it. No more for you. No, you are done. I see that his licence to practice was revoked on the grounds of gross immorality and unprofessional conduct. Yes. You can't get much firmer than that, can you? No, you can't. Okay. He's lost his license to practice medicine, potentially a disaster, although I struggle to understand how he ever had a license to practice medicine in the first place. I've wondered that as well.

He can't have had a license to practice medicine. Anyway, the other thing. He's like, you're not a doctor. You're not having one. Stop doing this. He's still got the radio, though. He's still got that potential cash cow. 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 Morris Fishbine 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 disbarred lunatic

offering up medical advice. Yes, and the Federal Radio Commission get involved in the end. Spoil sports. 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 and he's... And he's got no idea what he's talking about. Not a clue. Not a clue. Yeah. So eventually they have to pull the plug on it and no more surgery and no more radio for you. I'll be back with Tim and John and his goats after this short break.

So things are not looking good for Dr. John R. Brinkley because he's not a doctor anymore. He's not. 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 going to do? 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. Who would have thought that a failed con man would be attracted by politics? It was the olden days, Tim. We'll never see the like again.

So he runs twice to be the governor of Kansas. Well, that's a big job. It's a big job. He's not just running for mayor. No. Governor of Kansas. As we've discovered, not being remotely qualified for a position is no obstacle to Brinkley. He just can do attitude.

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? 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. 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. It has been suggested that if that hadn't happened, he might have taken it. 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's, 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. Anyway, he doesn't get in. He nearly makes it. He tries again in 1932, loses again. Can't be it for Brinkley. Well, the second time that he ran did even 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 lunatic, goat ball guy, who's been disbarred and discredited and da-da-da. So it created even more. You would think that would have done more damage earlier, but okay, eventually they figure out that sort of attack line. Eventually. So he upsticks and he moves to Del Rio, Texas, which is way down there on the border, where he tries again to practice medicine, only this time he takes,

and increased interest in people's prostate glands. He's not monkey testically, goat testically anymore. Why do I think that's worse? Somehow I think that's even worse, 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'll rejuvenate you. He gets another radio show. 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. But the border is important there, right?

Because he can put the radio transmitter in Mexico. Yeah. So he gets around the American authorities that way. Because he's not allowed to do it in America. But he's from Mexico, even though they can hear it in America. Yeah. So he's got, I think they called it a border blast. So he's got this massive radio mast near his home, but it's in Mexico.

And therefore, he's immune to American regulation. It's a nice trick. This show is broadcast across the states. You could pick it up in every single one of the states. It was that powerful. 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. 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 die-hard fans, the ride-or-die-or-die people who just refuse to believe anything bad about them at all. So he resurrects his career, if indeed it ever really went away. By 1938, he's got another hospital in Arkansas. He's living the high life. He's got mansions.

He's got yachts, Cadillacs, luxury holidays. Nothing can go wrong for Doc Brinkley. Yeah, but Morris Fishbone hadn't forgotten about him. Oh, right, his old nemesis. His old nemesis. And of course, because Brinkley can't keep quiet and stay off the radar, Fishbine is just like, right, I'll have you. And he publishes a number of exposés calling him a quack and a charlatan.

And Brinkley, to defend himself against this, decides that he's going to sue him for libel. Bold move. Don't do it if what the person is saying is perfectly true. Because it all then gets laid out in court. All of it. All of it gets laid out in court. The monkey goat glands, the unsterilized 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. How many goats died justice for the goats? I think we're probably going to leave with the 42 people dying. That's my suggestion. But yes. But that's not good for Brinkley. None of it's good for Brinkley. It all gets laid out. Obviously the court finds in fish pines. 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. Mic drop. Perfect. So he loses the case, he gets sued and then bad day at the office, the IRS sue him for tax fraud. Yeah, because he wasn't paying his taxes. Of course he wasn't. Who would have thought? Who would have thought?

And then the post office sue him for mail fraud. Yeah, but it's like shark circling, isn't it? And like once somebody's made the first bite is they're all going in him. Right. So this is the end of the 1930s. It sounds like it's basically the end for Brinkley's career. 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. He has a series of heart attacks. Dies alone, penniless and in disgrace. 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. A wise move. But who knows? Maybe there are even broader lessons to draw. What do you take from all this? 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 manners 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. And I think check your credentials as well is 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. Yeah. I mean, it is amazing how much gets sold basically by influencers now. It's, you know,

it's on YouTube. It's on TikTok. And actually the main reason why, My people buy it is because, well, they like the influencer. 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.

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. Yeah. Well, I mean, I suppose it depends. It depends what's in the face cream or the protein powders. 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. All in favour of actual evidence. Evidence. 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. Betwixt the cautionary tales.

Something. Kate Lister, thank you so much. Thank you. 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 with you and follow along wherever it is that you'll 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 betwixt at history hit.com. 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 Delagie 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.