If it’s 13 May, it must be… well, obviously: the 84th anniversary of the day the Journal of the American Medical Association reported on the outcome of a libel case brought when its editor Morris Fishbein called John Romulus Brinkley a charlatan.
But why? Why would Dr Fishbein say such a beastly thing about Brinkley? Especially given the enormous value of Brinkley’s pioneering medical work: giving people implants of goats’ bollocks.
He started out on this path by studying medicine at a school with a dubious reputation, where he didn’t finish his studies, and then buying a degree in medicine and setting up as a GP in smalltown Kansas.
It was here (after a peripatetic existence involving medical chalatanry, unpaid bills, leaving town, and bigamy) that he hit upon the idea of opening a chap’s scrotum, shoving a bit of goat testicle in, and sewing the feller up again.
He discovered he could charge $750 for this (in 1918 — about $10,000 today), so he kept doing it, sometimes operating on women, too, and placing a bit of ‘goat gland’ near the ovaries. When one patient became pregnant, JRB knew what to do…
Yes, it pays to advertise. Unless you’re a quack whose ‘implants’ simply get absorbed by the body, and whose adverts just bring you to the attention of the American Medical Association. Morris Fishbein, as editor of its journal, made a habit of exposing medical fraud.
Admittedly, Brinkley didn’t altogether help himself by being a drunk, operating while drunk, and not being a stickler for hygiene. Over a dozen wrongful death lawsuits landed on his desk between 1930 and 1941.
He was enormously successful, though, and the first time someone tried to arrest him for being clearly dodgy, the Governor of Kansas wouldn’t let them because he made the state too much money.
Along the way, he acquired yachts, a mansion with a neon sign in the garden spelling out his name, a swimming pool tiled with swastikas (oh, did I not mention? He was a big fan of Hitler, too), and the friendship of the Duke of Windsor (also not averse to dictators).
Brinkley also found time to own radio stations, invent radio advertising (mostly for goat knackers, obviously), and run for office twice (unsuccessfully). He came a cropper, finally, in 1938 when Fishbein called him a charlatan in print. Brinkley sued for libel.
The jury decided he “should be considered a charlatan and a quack in the ordinary, well-understood meaning of those words” and the house of cards fell. He declared bankruptcy in 1941 and died penniless a year later.
He was only 56, but… well, he’d packed quite a lot in, hadn’t he? You can watch a whole 1986 documentary about him if you like:
