WEBVTT - John Brinkley: The Quackiest Quack in History? 0:00:00.480 --> 0:00:04.560 Attention, DC, Boston, Toronto and any place that can fly 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:07.520 to those cities. We're gonna be live on stage doing 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:11.280 our thing again. I'm May fourth, fifth, and sixth this year. 0:00:11.360 --> 0:00:13.319 That's right, And I gotta say we've done this topic 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:16.040 a few times already and it's a real banger and 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:17.799 we can't wait to come to your city and have 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:21.079 you see it with us. We're so excited and we 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:23.919 just can't hide it. So go to link tree, slash 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:29.080 sysk and get your tickets today. Welcome to Stuff you 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:38.320 should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:40.920 the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:44.040 So this is stuff you should have. Old timey history edition, 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:49.839 Quackery sub edition. Let's go. Yeah, we've covered a lot 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:53.040 of quacks over the years. It's kind of fun. I 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:55.760 want to shout out the listener who wrote in about 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:58.200 this one. This is where the idea came from, because 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:01.280 I had never heard of John our Brink, the famous 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:05.399 quack of the nineteen twenties and thirties, but you know 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:08.440 who did, and I'm gonna say I'm gonna spell it first. 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:11.920 His name is Matt s. E. J n O W 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:15.039 s Ki from Austin, Texas. And I wrote Matt back 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:17.280 and said, hey, man, we're gonna shout you out. Is 0:01:17.319 --> 0:01:20.920 the N silent? I figured it was Sajowski and he 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:25.280 said the following, The N is not silent. The J 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:28.920 is like an H and the W was like an F. 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:36.240 So then he phonetically spelled out as uh Senofski. Oh wow, 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:39.720 there ain't no F in this thing. But it's uh 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:44.160 Matt's sinofsky. Very nice. That's a that's a new one 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:46.160 on me. So way to go, Matt, for your life. Yes, 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:49.680 so Matt, Matt's in this idea of John R. Brinkley, 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:53.480 who was a very famous and wealthy quack in the 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:57.200 nineteen twenties and thirties who um Olivia helped us put 0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:00.680 this together, which is a great I'm sorry to Libya 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:03.840 for having to do this. But he had this procedure 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:07.680 called the goat gland procedure, yeah, which we'll get into 0:02:07.680 --> 0:02:09.440 in more detail later, but just as a way of 0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:14.920 setting it up, it's basically the practice of zeno transplantation. 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:18.280 And also Olivia wanted to shout out the book The 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:22.519 Bizarre Career of John R. Brinkley by R. Alton Lee 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:26.480 from two thousand and two, a great book and seems 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:28.880 to be the book on John R. Brinkley. But Zeno 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:32.000 transplantation is sort of what he was dabbling in, and 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:34.200 that's how we're going to start this thing out. Yeah, 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:37.280 which is a thing. It's just using organs or tissue 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:41.000 or whatever body parts from other species in humans, right, 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:45.519 So a pig heart trans zeno transplantation. And it's something 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:47.440 humans have been trying to crack for a little while 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:50.720 because we place such little value on animals that we 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:53.360 are like, well, let's just harvest them for parts for ourselves. 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:56.840 There's a lot of stuff that we've run into still 0:02:56.960 --> 0:03:01.160 run into, like a specialized, weird exotic infections that you 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:06.480 can get just utterly rejecting your body, rejecting the organ 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:09.000 or the tissue and actually getting mad at you for 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:12.760 even trying it. But it's still going on, and there's 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:15.119 a long history of trying it that goes at least 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:18.440 back to the sixteen hundreds with a French physician named 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:22.520 Jean Baptiste Denis, which is a great French name, and 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:26.880 he started using blood from animals for blood transfusions. Yeah, 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.040 and I think that was kind of the first first 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:33.880 whirl at melding our two worlds our two bodies. And 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:37.680 they banned it for a while. It had mixed results, 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:39.400 and France said, now, you know, we shouldn't do this 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:42.160 for a while. Yeah, and this is this is seventeenth 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:46.920 century France yanally, so good for them. In the nineteenth 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:51.480 century they started messing around with skin grafts from different animals, 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:55.720 and it seems like the reports were like success rates 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.880 were mixed. But now we think modern medicine says, you know, 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:01.720 what it probably was was more like it didn't work 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:04.120 like a graph but sort of like a skin like 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:08.280 a band aid, while your skin underneath repaired itself, right, 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:11.920 if it worked at all, That's probably what was going on. 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:15.600 And they said we should just make band aids, make 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:19.479 them out of pigeon skin exactly. So one of the 0:04:19.520 --> 0:04:21.800 other things is kind of like tangential to that, but 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:24.800 very much involved, is the idea that different parts of 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:29.440 different animals can give you, can can rejuvenate your vigor 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:34.599 or give you sexual vitality, you know, like make you strong, 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:38.040 like bowl kind of thing by eating bowls testicles. That's 0:04:38.080 --> 0:04:40.400 the kind of the premise behind it, and it's not 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:43.520 technically zeno transplantation because you're not inserting it into your 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:47.920 body through like surgery, but by ingesting it. It is 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.200 kind of close as far as that whole thing goes. 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:53.719 I mean, you're really splitting hairs. If you're like, that's 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:57.239 not zeno transplantation, why are you even bringing that up? Yeah, 0:04:57.279 --> 0:04:59.720 and this, you know, this factors into the eventual goat 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:01.440 glad procedure we're going to get to. That's why we 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:03.760 mentioned it. But that's why I brought it up. Yeah, 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:07.279 I mean, for since the ancient Romans, there have been 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:12.920 generally men that you know, something happens to men when 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:15.320 they get older. That's why they have ed drugs these days, 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:18.680 because you know, virility goes down and maybe a rectile 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:21.919 dysfunction happens. So this has always been the case, and 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:25.239 even in ancient Rome they realized this when they got older, 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:28.240 it was sort of a downhill slope sexually speaking, and 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:31.000 so they would do things like drink hawks, seamen or 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:36.200 eat rabbit genitalia and literally just sort of like eating 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:38.480 these things like you mentioned, eating bolt testicles or whatever 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:43.559 has always been a thing. It seems like that hawks 0:05:43.560 --> 0:05:46.960 Seaman came out of nowhere, So apologies to anybody who 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:51.120 was eating breakfast right the good band name though, especially 0:05:51.160 --> 0:05:54.680 if you were eating cereal with milk. All right, there 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:59.040 is a guy named Charles Eduard or sorry, Charles Eduard Brown, 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:04.600 how do you say brown? And En Francais Brown Sicard. 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:09.920 He injected himself with some serum that he squeezed from 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:13.160 the testicles of dogs and the testicles of guinea pigs, 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:16.039 and he said, by god, this is amazing. I feel 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:18.279 thirty years younger and I'm seventy two. I feel like 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:21.560 I'm clearly in my forties. And you guys got to 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:24.560 try this, and it's spread pretty quickly. But then the 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:27.480 other physicians are like, it's not making me feel anything 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:30.279 at all except grossed out, So this is probably just 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:33.440 a placebo effect that you were suffering from. They're like, still, 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:36.840 let's get back to it. Let's keep trying. And then 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:39.599 before Brinkley, not too long before, there was a pretty 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:44.839 legit doctor named Sergei Vornov who was doing surgeries where 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:50.160 he would use monkey testicles, as in transplant monkey testicles. 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:53.360 And this was in France, again in Paris, and then 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:57.360 eventually thyroid glands from like a chimpanzee trying to cure 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:01.760 thyroid deficiency. So again, this just idea of xeno transplantation 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:06.760 has been around for a long time before John Brinkley 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:09.880 was born in the hills of North Carolina in eighteen 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:14.680 eighty five. Yes, by the way, Sergei Vornov's work, I 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:19.360 think is what led to the monkey gland cocktail. Oh yeah, yeah, gin, 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:23.600 orange juice, grenadine and absinthe. It's named monkey glander talking 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:27.320 about that operation of getting monkey testicles implanted in you. 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:30.200 So they made a cocktail over it. That's probably a 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:34.200 safer approach. So Beta North Carolina, Beta North Carolina. It's 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:37.640 in the Appalachian Mountains. It's in Western North Carolina or WNC. 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:42.440 And he was born into an odd family arrangement. His 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:45.080 father was also named John, and he was a mountain 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:49.119 doctor and Appalachian folk doctor basically. And he was married 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:53.800 to a woman named Sally Mingus and they were happily 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:58.480 married apparently until Sarah Candice Burnett, who was known as Candice, 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:01.920 who was Sally's niece, came to live with them and 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:05.800 very quickly got pregnant by John Senior. She was twenty four, 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:09.520 he was fifty seven, and that's where John Romulus Brinkley 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:13.679 came from. Um and it just got hotter from there, right, yeah, 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:20.040 So John Junior then his mom is what would that 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:23.360 relation even be if it was, well, it wouldn't be 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:27.920 any relation to him, really, Sally mingus Well, no, no, nos, 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:32.559 his his his mom Sarah. That would be his mom. No, no, no. 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:36.920 But what I was trying to pin another an extra relation, 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:39.559 if you know what I mean, But there wouldn't be one, 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:43.120 because Sally wasn't even related to him, no, except by 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:47.440 marriage to his father. Right. Oh, you're saying no, you're right, 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:49.440 You're right. Yeah. No. I was about to be like, no, 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:51.679 it's his cousin, but you're absolutely right. She's There were 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:54.480 no like, yeah, no family shenanigans. But the long and 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:57.280 short of it is is that his his real mom, Sarah, 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:01.760 died at twenty four. John Senior died not too long 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:04.680 after that, and I believe by the time he was 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:06.760 ten years old he was in being raised by Sally, 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:11.440 who was his dad's wife. But no relation, right, Candice's aunt. Yeah, 0:09:11.480 --> 0:09:15.000 din't that odd? It is? And it's not. We made 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:18.680 it more confusing than it is I don't think so. Okay, 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:21.960 So actually he was like Brinkley. He was one of 0:09:21.960 --> 0:09:24.839 the great quacks of all time, like one of the 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:28.920 greatest ever to live. And he showed kind of an 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:31.600 early talent for quackery. He was a good student in school, 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:34.680 but he left at sixteen, ran off and got married, 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:37.920 and he and his first wife, Sally, they had a 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:41.679 medicine show, which is exactly what it sounds like. You're 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:44.840 hawking tonics that you just completely made up out a 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:48.439 whole cloth, but you're doing it by being super entertaining 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:51.520 and that kind of like m Olivia helped us with this, 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:53.439 like you said, and she, as she put it, it 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:56.560 kind of set the stage for his later career. He 0:09:56.600 --> 0:09:58.640 only did it for about a year or so before 0:09:58.640 --> 0:10:00.600 he went off and did some other ite or at work. 0:10:01.000 --> 0:10:03.760 But apparently that was the bug that bit him all 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:06.440 the way back then when he was like twenty early twenties, 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:09.600 it was. And just to clear up the Sally who 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:13.080 was his wife, was not his lady who raised him, 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:16.040 Sally who was not his mom. No, although that really 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:18.840 would have completed the circle had it really would have. 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:21.880 And Libby also points out something that this was at 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:27.480 a time when the medical establishment was not super established yet, 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:33.040 so the mountain folk doctor was perhaps made way more 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:37.560 trustworthy than this modern, learned doctor who went to fancy 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:41.000 medical school and like, I don't want your your real 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:44.840 you know, medicines. I want a blood letting or a 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:49.360 purgative or some ither mectin or something. And it was 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:52.080 definitely one of those situations where I was like, Wow, 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:55.840 it's interesting how history can repeat itself all these years later. 0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:57.600 I was going to say, I'm so glad we've moved 0:10:57.600 --> 0:11:01.560 on from that after all these years. Exactly, it is crazy. 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:03.679 I mean, that's exactly what's going on. It's like, oh, 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:06.679 you're an expert. I don't trust you. I trust this 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:09.880 guy who's trying to put a crystal in my anus. Well, 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:13.400 there were a lot of weird similar similarities with his 0:11:13.440 --> 0:11:15.320 story and like modern times to me. But I don't 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:17.320 want to delve into this too much. Okay, all right, 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:21.480 but let's still into medical school, which is what Brinkley 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:25.200 finally did at Bennett Medical College. It was what was 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:29.040 called an eclectic medical school, a lot of botanical remedies 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:31.800 and stuff like that, and it was back then it 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:35.920 was a genuine branch of medical practice. But what he 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:38.439 didn't know is that it was sort of like when 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:41.520 I went to my little NYU film school for two 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.200 summers and they taught me how to edit film on 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:47.160 the flatbed machine, and like six months later they threw 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:49.160 that all in the trash and said, now we're digital. 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:53.120 He went to Eclectic Medical School, and very soon after 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:55.160 they were like, you know what, we don't really count 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:57.560 that as medical school, and we're the AMA and we're 0:11:57.559 --> 0:12:02.280 the deciders. Yeah. The Carnegie Foundation, I think, commissioned what 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:05.040 came to be known as the Flexner Report in nineteen ten, 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:08.880 which basically do a thing on that we will someday. Sure. Yeah, 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.559 but the Flexner Report basically said, we've just surveyed all 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:14.000 of modern medicine in the United States and it is 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:17.720 in sad shape. We basically suggest that you should follow 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:22.440 the biomedical model and feverishly stamp out any competition to it. 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:25.600 And that's kind of where the AMA went. Yeah, exactly. 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:30.480 So Brinkley now has this degree from Bennett College. He 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:33.680 it's not to say that it was a pure bunk 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:36.560 degree or anything like that. He did go to lectures 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:41.320 where there were real doctors. This one into chronologist Harry Hower. 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:45.800 I'm sorry. Henry Hower was an indo chronologist who taught him, 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:48.800 and he's where he sort of got the idea for 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:52.680 these glandular extracts, yeah, to heal the body. And I 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:54.400 believe that's where Brinkley was kind of like, all right, 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:57.120 let me put that in my hip pocket. Right. Harrower 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:00.000 was like, try this adreno chrome. It'll really mess you up. 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:05.520 So Brinkley was not a good guy. We'll just go 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:08.720 ahead and spoil that. Yeah, this isn't one of those 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:10.840 stories where it's like, oh, the guy took on the 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:14.359 medical establishment, or the guy was like a David and Goliath, 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:17.679 or you know, he persisted or persevered, or he was 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:20.319 just like a rapscallion who was still lovable. He was 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:23.400 a bad guy. And um, there's a really early example 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:28.000 of that where his marriage with Sally was on the 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:31.959 rocks and um, she filed for divorce. So he took 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:35.040 their daughter, Wanda, their first and only child at the time, 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:38.280 to Canada and basically held her hostage there until Sally 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:41.960 agreed to reunite with him. Yeah. That's called kidnapping. Yeah, 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:46.360 literal kid napping. Um, and that's a that's a good 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:48.400 example of the kind of thing that he would do. 0:13:48.480 --> 0:13:50.360 And if you see pictures of this guy, he's got 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:56.120 almost like a slight Casper milktoast continge to him. But 0:13:56.200 --> 0:13:59.560 he was not at all Casper milktoast. He was. He 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:02.160 was as he was, not a good guy. You'll see, 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:05.040 just just trust me. Yeah he got he's got a 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:07.840 bad look in his eye, you can tell, but like 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:11.800 he's got soft, soft, rounded face. Yeah he was. He 0:14:11.880 --> 0:14:16.640 was a softy. He also married his second wife, Minnie Talitha, 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:20.040 when he was still married to Sally. I believe it 0:14:20.040 --> 0:14:22.360 took a few years even where he had two wives 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:26.000 before he got formally divorced. So not a good guy 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:28.720 on the home front. He drops out of medical school 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:32.120 he never finished, I believe, and then ended up I 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:35.320 think he did end up finishing medical school, yeah, years 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:39.960 later at the eclectic Medical College of Kansas City in 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:44.160 nineteen fifteen. Didn't keep him from practicing doctoring in that 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:48.440 sort of interim period, but he and his wife, his 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:51.560 second wife, Millie, I'm sorry. Minie found an ad in 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:55.000 the paper in nineteen seventeen from Milford, Kansas that said, hey, 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:57.880 we're a small town two thousand people. We need a 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:00.760 doctor and someone to run our pharmacy. Many had her 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:03.360 own little dubious medical degree at this point, and so 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:05.880 they said, all right, we're gonna move to small town, 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:08.680 Kansas and be the town doctors. And that's what they did. 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:11.640 So they were the medical providers for this entire town. 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:15.400 I've seen two hundred people was the population at the time. 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:18.200 I've seen two thousand, but I saw two hundred on 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:20.960 like an old PBS documentary on this, so I'm going 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:25.600 to go with that one. I am going low. So 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:30.960 the Brinkley's provided care like they weren't. They didn't just 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:34.520 immediately start drifting the town. They actually did help see 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:39.600 them through the nineteen eighteen flu epidemic. They were fine, 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:42.840 like there was. People didn't have any real complaints about them. 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:49.240 And then, apparently just out of total happenstance, a farmer 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:52.960 showed up at the practice. This farmer went unnamed, but 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:57.000 this is supposedly the first goat gland patient, and it 0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:00.120 was the farmer's idea to transplant coad. So remember other 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:02.480 people are trying this, it's not completely out of left field, 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:06.640 but it was the farmer's idea and from different accounts, 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:13.359 including one there's a documentary called Nuts with an exclamation 0:16:13.440 --> 0:16:17.800 point that says that the doctor or the farmer kind 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:19.760 of had to talk Brinkley into it, that he was 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:22.960 revolted by the idea at first, and then the farmers like, 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:25.040 i'll pay you, and he's like, okay, sure, let's do it. 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:28.240 A you're gonna read the quote go ahead. So the 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:30.760 farmer I think Brinkley had made a joke about the 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.280 goats were so virile, and the farmer said, why he 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:37.320 didn't quote go ahead and put a pair of goat 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:40.800 glands in me transplant them. Grabbed him on the way 0:16:40.880 --> 0:16:45.200 i'd grabbed a pound suite on an apple stray. I 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:47.440 don't know what any of that last part means. I 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:49.160 think a pound sweet is a type of apple, and 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:53.480 apple stray is like a wild apple sapling that's sprouting up, 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:55.360 so you want to make work out of it. Look 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:58.280 at you, Hey, I just totally made that up, and 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:00.760 I'm sure we'll get tons of listener mail saying jos 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:04.200 is so wrong, he couldn't be wronger. Actually, somehow an 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:12.480 apple stray is really offensive. Right, So Brinkley hesitated at first, 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:15.640 Like you mentioned, and then the farmer said, I'll even 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:19.080 bring you the testicles of the goat and put him 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:20.960 in my scrow to him, and that's what he did. 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:24.840 And so what we don't know is this farmer's name, 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:28.360 and so we don't really have a great idea of 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:31.439 how this really went because it's not officially on record. 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:34.680 Doesn't really matter they I mean, sure it mattered to him. 0:17:34.680 --> 0:17:37.480 But the long and short of it is is that 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:41.200 this procedure happened, and word got around, and all of 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:44.800 a sudden a second patient stepped forward, mister William Stittsworth 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:49.159 and said, hey, I would like this goat thing too, 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:52.280 And Brinkley said, I'll want up you. I'll put some 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:55.160 goat testicles in you. I will put some goat ovaries 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:58.760 in your wife. And then Livia wrote the best sentence 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:01.600 she's ever written for us when she said, within a 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:04.919 year the couple had a child who, almost unbelievably, they 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:10.960 named Billy Billy the goat gland child. Oh wow, So 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:15.040 this was the start of something big. As Bert backrec 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:17.680 put it, yea, how much money was it? He charged 0:18:17.720 --> 0:18:20.600 him seven fifty bucks just ten grand today, which if 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:23.720 this were a legitimate surgery, ten grand's not that bad 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:27.159 in today's money, right, a pretty good deal. But it 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:30.760 wasn't a legitimate surgery. It was a completely made up 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:35.320 surgery where basically he would take the testicles a slice 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:37.760 from a testicle of a young goat about three months old, 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:42.880 specifically a Toggenberg goat, which were these tiny, cute, very 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:48.119 clean kinds of goats that don't smell. I've seen or 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:51.680 I heard or I smelled, and they would He would 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:54.639 take these little slices of testicles, make an incision in 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:59.800 your scrowed them, put the testicle goat testicle slice in there, 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:02.840 so you back up ten fifteen minutes, you were done, 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:05.719 and that was it. He might as well put like 0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:08.080 a Tonka truck or something in your scrotum. Like there 0:19:08.160 --> 0:19:12.840 was nothing biologically happening to this except maybe increasing your 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:16.800 risk of infection, yeah, and genetic chimerism, where all of 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:20.520 a sudden you had Toggenberg goat DNA mixed in with 0:19:20.560 --> 0:19:23.520 your own. Yeah. So it's not like he was when 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:28.560 we said testicles. He wasn't surgically attaching testicles to blood 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:32.520 vessels or anything like that. He told people that he 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:35.679 was attaching blood vessels, but he would. I'm surprised he 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:39.040 even bothered to put the slice testicle in there, to 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:46.080 be honest, Well, he had some honor. He also had 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:50.520 a pretty good eye for advertising. And maybe that's a 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:53.320 good place to take a break. Oh yeah, all right, 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:54.880 we're gonna take a break, and we're gonna talk about 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:58.359 how he sort of revolutionized PR in a way right 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:29.119 after this stuff. You should know, all right, so we 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:32.720 mentioned he's doing this goat gland procedure, Brinkley is he's 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:37.080 a quack. He hired an advertising consultant and then later 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:39.280 on when hire a PR person, and these were this 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:41.520 was sort of the beginnings of this kind of job 0:20:41.600 --> 0:20:45.560 in the United States, and started to get the word 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:49.040 out in newspapers such that he got some pretty prominent 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:52.480 patients in there, didn't he He did, And the one 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:54.720 that really paid off the most was a guy named 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:58.879 Harry Chandler. And thanks to his press, I mean, he 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:03.680 got some crazy press throughout the country. His name became very, 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:07.240 very famous, and people started traveling to Milford. And because 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:11.639 of this this you know, renown, this publisher or owner 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:15.080 actually of the Los Angeles Times put himself up as 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:17.119 a patient. And I've seen either he put himself up 0:21:17.200 --> 0:21:19.880 or one of his editors up as a patient and said, 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:23.400 here's the deal. If this is successful, we will sing 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:26.400 your praises forever in the Los Angeles Times, which will 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:29.440 legitimize you in ways you can't even imagine. If it's 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:31.760 not successful, we're going to ruin you. What do you 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:34.560 want to do? And he did it. He worked on 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:38.520 either Harry Chandler or his editor, and it worked in 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:42.840 whatever way this could possibly work, and the LA Times 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:46.080 started singing the praises of doctor Brinkley, and he went 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:51.200 from kind of famous to a global superstars as far 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:55.359 as like a quack can get. Yeah. And also, Keyhan 0:21:55.400 --> 0:21:58.560 put a pin in this. Harry Chandler own Los Angeles' 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:02.199 first radio station, KHJ, And this will all kind of 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:05.120 come back into focus in a minute. But things really 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:10.080 picked up. Brinkley built his own sixteen bed hospital in Milford, Kansas, 0:22:10.520 --> 0:22:12.639 a town of either two hundred or two thousand, but 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:16.240 it was the population was rising at least by sixteen 0:22:16.359 --> 0:22:19.639 because I get the feeling those beds were always full 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:26.440 of men who wanted these Arkan assassin Arkanson arkans and 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:28.960 goats which he kept out back. And you would walk 0:22:29.000 --> 0:22:31.000 you out there. You can say, you can even pick 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:33.960 out your goat. Who I mean, did he was he 0:22:34.040 --> 0:22:37.919 killing these goats? I couldn't find any ink um what 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:41.959 happened to I have to surmise that he did because 0:22:42.359 --> 0:22:44.679 he would order forty or fifty him at a time, 0:22:45.000 --> 0:22:47.480 and once he took their testicles, there were worth nothing 0:22:47.520 --> 0:22:49.840 to him. Why would he keep them alive? So yeah, 0:22:49.880 --> 0:22:52.760 I think all these goats died. Yeah, that's the worst 0:22:52.760 --> 0:22:55.680 part of this whole thing. So pick out your goat, 0:22:55.960 --> 0:22:58.880 will put these testicles in you, or at least part 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:01.679 of them. And not only is it good for this, 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:05.320 but sort of like with the medicine shows in the 0:23:05.800 --> 0:23:09.600 quackery of snake oil salesman, he's like he rattled off 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:12.160 a list of other things that it would help, right, 0:23:12.240 --> 0:23:17.360 like schizophrenia, diabetes, high blood pressure. Apparently he did a 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:21.720 goat ovary procedure to treat a spinal tumor on a woman. 0:23:22.160 --> 0:23:24.920 Basically anything that could be wrong with you. He said, 0:23:25.400 --> 0:23:28.520 this goat glam procedure is going to help. Yeah. And 0:23:28.560 --> 0:23:32.280 then in addition, remember he was an eclectic medical practitioner, 0:23:32.320 --> 0:23:35.359 so he was into herbs and tonics and tinctures and 0:23:35.400 --> 0:23:39.960 stuff like that, and he sold patent medicines as well, 0:23:40.080 --> 0:23:41.480 at a time where you could make a lot of 0:23:41.520 --> 0:23:45.600 money selling patent medicine. So he had this thriving surgical 0:23:45.600 --> 0:23:49.760 practice that people would travel to Kansas to participate in. 0:23:50.000 --> 0:23:52.280