Dr. John Brinkley, 1920s radio pioneer

Dr. John Brinkley, in 1921

The 1920s were quite appropriately dubbed "The Roaring '20s." It was a time of change, after World War I, a time of young people changing the morals in America -- the time of flappers, illegal booze, wild speculation on Wall Street, and yes, a time when the country embraced a new phenomenon, commercial radio, which operated with a minimum of government regulation.

As might be expected, the new medium attracted charlatans -- such as Dr. John Brinkley, in Kansas, with his station KFKB, whose signal beamed across several states. Brinkley talked for hours each day -- the first infomercials, promoting the revolutionary goat gland treatment at his clinic, which he claimed was a cure for multiple medical problems. Brinkley was eventually shut down, but not before he had fleeced his listeners of millions of dollars, and had, at the height of his fame, nearly captured the office of governor of Kansas.

Dr. Brinkley was born in North Carolina in 1885, and as a youth learned to be a telegraph operator, which took him to New York City to work for Western Union. When he returned to North Carolina, in 1907, he married a childhood sweetheart and the two newlyweds joined a Dr.(?) Burke in selling colored water (which they suggested had virility properties) to rural customers throughout North Carolina and Tennessee.

Brinkley found that he rather liked the (pseudo) medical field, and later that year enrolled in the Bennett Eclectic Medical College, in Chicago. It was there that he developed his interest in the function of various glands in the human (and animal) body. He finished his work at the college, but was unable to pay his full tuition bill and the school withheld his diploma and refused to transfer his credits to any other medical school.

It was 1915 before Brinkley was able to pay off his tuition debt to Bennett College, during which time he worked at various jobs in Chicago and several other cities, some jobs legitimate, some suspect. He also married a second wife (before the divorce was finalized from the first wife). With his Bennett credits in hand he was able to finish his medical degree at the Kansas City Eclectic Medical University. This diploma allowed him to practice medicine in eight states. He settled in Milford Kansas, answering an ad saying that the town needed a doctor. (Note -- Milford is a suburb of Manhattan, 2010 population 530.)

In 1917 Brinkley, as a member of the Kansas Army Reserve, was called up for service during World War I. He never did serve in France due to a real, or contrived, nervous breakdown.

In 1918, Brinkley opened a 16 bed clinic in Milford, winning over the locals by offering good service and making house calls at all hours, day or night. It was here that he did his best, and perhaps his only legitimate good work, during the deadly flu pandemic of 1918. His hard work and his record of nursing victims back to good health were "resoundingly" positive.

Dr. Brinkley began to advertise that his clinic could "fix" someone who was "sexually weak." There was immediate interest in the process, which involved placing strands of goat sexual glands into men (and women). Brinkley struck gold when the wife of his first transplant patient (an older gentleman) gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

Brinkley's operation was crude but it gained national attention. He claimed his procedure could not only cure impotence, but also some 27 other ailments, ranging from dementia, to emphysema, to flatulence. He was soon performing over 100 operations per week, at $750 each ($8,720 in 2013 dollars).

In 1923 Brinkley used some of his revenue to build a radio station at Milford, KFKB (Kansas First, Kansas Best, or Kansas Folks Know Best), just the 4th commercial radio station in America. Brinkley spent hours each day on the radio, primarily promoting his goat gland treatments, with folksy good humor, liberal quotes from the Bible, plus various arguments for a wide variety of treatments at his clinic. (A contemporary joke at the time -- "What's the fastest thing on four legs? Answer -- "A goat passing Dr. Brinkley's Clinic.)

But Brinkley's station offered up a varied program of entertainment as well. There was military band music, French lessons, astrology forecasts, story-telling, Hawaiian music, Gospel singers, bluegrass and cowboy singers, including both Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.

Soon Brinkley's Clinic was receiving more than 3,000 letters a day. Milford had to build a bigger Post Office, which Brinkley paid for. He also helped the town in other ways. He paid for a new sewage system, new sidewalks, installed a new electricity system; he built apartments for his employees and patients, and a new community band stand. He sponsored Milford's baseball team, which was called, "Brinkley's Goats." By 1929, KFKF had won the Gold Cup, as the most popular radio station in the United States.

Brinkley established the Brinkley Pharmaceutical Association, which brought in some $14,000 per week profits (more than $10 million per year in 2013 dollars). But none of this was enough, and when he was thwarted in his efforts to increase station KFKB's power to 5,000 watts, he sold the station (for $90,000) and headed to Del Rio, Texas,, where he set up his operation, using radio station XER, which was located across the border in Mexico.

Originally XER was a 50, 000 watt station, but by 1932 Brinkley had increased the station's power, to 150,000 watts, then 500,000, and finally to one million watts, making XER the most powerful station in the world. It was said that the XER signal was so powerful that it turned on automobile headlights, made bedsprings hum, and broadcasts bled into telephone conversations. Area ranchers reported that they didn't need a radio -- broadcasts were picked up via fence wires and dental appliances.

Del Rio began to be known as "Hillbilly Hollywood" because of the stars it offered -- Jimmy Rogers, Patsy Montana, Red Foley, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and the Carter Family, among many others. Brinkley began to sell air time at XER for a whopping $1,700/hour -- $23,400/hour today) to others, many of whom were hucksters, selling life insurance, "genuine simulated" diamonds, Crazy Water Crystals (for sexual prowess), and various forms of religious paraphernalia, including "what were claimed to be autographed pictures of Jesus Christ."

In the early 1930s Dr. Brinkley was on top of the world. He was hob-knobbing with Hollywood film stars, collecting fast cars, and setting up clinics in many locations. He built a mansion for his wife on 16 acres of land that boasted a fleet of a dozen Cadillacs, an Olympic sized swimming pool with a ten foot diving platform, and exotic animals imported from the Galapagos Islands. Then, almost as fast as it began, Brinkley's world began to crumble. He made two failed attempts to become Kansas' Governor (so that he could pack the state medical board with members who were sympathetic to his cause). The American Medical Association began to investigate Brinkley's medical procedures. The AMA investigative team was led by an unusually tenacious physician, Dr. Morris Fishbein.

Dr. Fishbein investigated Brinkley's questionable medical procedures, and at least four mysterious deaths, which Fishbein claimed were linked to Brinkley's operations. Brinkley sued, in 1941, but the jury found for Dr. Fishbein, saying,"Dr.Brinkley should be considered a charlatan and a quack in the ordinary, well understood use of those terms!"

Soon the Internal Revenue Service piled on, investigating Brinkley for tax fraud. The U.S. and Mexican governments reached an agreement, which shut down Brinkley's XER radio operation, and the Postal Service began its own investigation of mail fraud by Dr. Brinkley.

Later in 1941, Dr. Brinkley filed for bankruptcy. Brinkley, himself, became a patient, having suffered three heart attacks and the amputation of one leg. He died, penniless, in May, 1942, and is buried in Memphis, Tennessee.

Source; Border Radio Quackery -- Dr. Brinkley, Dr. John Brinkley, Medical Quack