"The Life of a Man: A Biography of John R. Brinkley" by Clement Wood
When it comes to the modern scam artist, Dr. John R. Brinkley (1885 - 1942) just might be the GOAT. And by GOAT, I mean he built an empire implanting goat testicles into men to cure sexual dysfunction. Alongside this medical innovation, he was an early pioneer of radio, establishing the KFKB (Kansas First, Kansas Best) station in Milford, Kansas to spread the word of his miracles. He was also early to the game of denying election results, following several losses in the race for Kansas state governor.
This week’s book, “The Life of a Man” by Clement Wood, is a 1937 biography commissioned by Brinkley at the height of his power. It is an over-the-top, glowing, and folksy account of Brinkley’s growth from a precocious barefoot boy to a medical miracle man. Coincidentally, 1937 was also the height of scrutiny for Brinkley, as the American Medical Association was in hot pursuit of quackery nationwide, and its editor Dr. Morris Fishbein was, for some reason, particularly skeptical about the viability of inserting chunks of goat testicles into a human scrotum.
And so this book seeks to set the record straight on Brinkley: plainly, that he did absolutely nothing wrong. The son of a broke rural doctor, in youth he’s portrayed like a typical child from a Wes Anderson film - doggedly determined, ambitious, adventurous, wise beyond his years, and lucky. He loses both parents young, after which he takes care of his old Aunt Sally and runs the small farm all by himself while attending school. He takes quickly to new technologies and starts working part time as a telegraph operator as a teen. At 17, he travels to Johns Hopkins University, marches into the dean’s office barefoot and announces he wants to be a doctor. The stuffy old dean takes one look at him and says no.
He manages to enroll instead at Bennett Eclectic Medical College, and after studying there spends much of early adulthood moving across the US doing a mix of doctorin’ and other odd jobs. He marries, separates, and marries again. By 1917, he lands in Milford, Kansas, where he begins practicing the miraculous goat testicle operation.
The book glosses over much of the reality of Brinkley’s early transience leading up to that point. He had a habit of accruing and running from debt. He abandoned his first wife and child to marry another woman without getting a divorce or paying alimony. At one point he ran a scam selling water with blue dye in it as an impotency cure. Even old Aunt Sally wasn’t really his aunt - she was his polygamous father’s second wife, and the aunt of his mother. This is all to say that “The Life of a Man” is, effectively, a book of lies.
It is a bit challenging to review a biography so full of lies without reverting to a tedious factchecking exercise, so I will just make the point here that the book, like Brinkley, is generally full of shit. The goat testicle transplants were real though, so back to those.
By Brinkley’s telling, one evening while he was winding down from a long day of serving the good people of Milford, a local farmer came knocking. The farmer reports that he and his wife had been trying for years to have a second child but he had “a flat tire.” After some back and forth, Brinkley jokes that if only the man had the testicles of a goat, he’d have nothing to worry about. At that, the farmer’s mood shifts suddenly, and he says “well, why don’t you put ‘em in?” Brinkley protests, and the farmer only becomes more determined, threatening to run the doctor out of town if he refuses to do the surgery. Under duress, Brinkley caves and agrees to do the surgery. It works perfectly.
It is an absurd story, but establishes a framework that is repeated throughout the biography. Brinkley just wants to help people, and he keeps finding himself in situations where those people demand he do unethical things. As word of the miraculous surgery spreads, a wealthy patient refuses to pay anything less than $500 for the operation, and tells Brinkley to never charge less than that again. It is here where the book’s function to combat ongoing investigations is most blatant.
His business expands rapidly. In short order he effectively builds out the town of Milford - hospital, power, sewage, sidewalks, radio tower - on his own dime to accommodate what would become thousands of surgeries implanting goat testicles into men and goat ovaries into women. Outside surgeries, he takes letters and offers prescriptions and diagnoses on the airwaves, directing people to a network of pharmacies he establishes. Absent from the text here are the more negative accounts of Brinkley’s behaviour at the time, like slashing tires, doing surgery drunk, holding patients hostage at gunpoint for payment, shooting a lot of people’s pets, and maybe biting off a guy’s ear.
This section is where the book peaks in terms of entertainment. It’s genuinely interesting to picture yourself in this podunk town growing and modernizing on the back of a bizarre scam. There are some funny specific details as he scales the scam, like the trial-by-error discovery that Angora goat testicles make the patient stink for weeks, whereas Toggenburg nuts leave a milder odour. But nothing good lasts forever.
As the establishment comes after Brinkley, he fights back. He feuds with local politicians, the AMA, runs for office as a write-in candidate and refuses to accept the results after losing. He loses his license to practice in Kansas and moves to Texas. Losing his radio license as well, he funds a million-watt station just across the border in Mexico and continues to blast his programs across North America. To solve the bottleneck for surgery demand, he eventually invents Formula 1020, a tonic that provides all the same benefits without the surgery. In many ways, he emerges as an eerie prototype for the modern grifter that just won’t fucking go away.
The final third of the book largely collapses into a litany of grievances Brinkley has against various parties ranging from rival local doctors to Woodrow Wilson, Mussolini, and of course the Jews. While the book seeks to advocate for the doctor throughout, the folksy fun charm of his early years and the absurd novelty of his rise fade away into the familiar persecution complex of an unrepentant piece of shit. As the saying goes, it smells like a goat wherever you go, better check your own nutsack.
The biography ends with a tribute to all of Brinkley’s accomplishments and promises that the best is yet to come, and it is worth mentioning what happened shortly after publication: Brinkley decided to sue Fishbein for libel over use of the term quack. This proved disastrous, as in the courtroom he was forced to admit directly that the goat testicle implants didn’t work, formula 1020 was just blue dye in water, and so on. The jury ruled that “quack” was the correct term. A flood of former patients sued shortly thereafter. Brinkley lost everything, quickly fell into ill health and died in 1942.
