Biography of Doctor John Brinkley

earns him Millions of Dollars during the Great Depression using a Radio Station

Probably born into poverty around 1885-1896 in North Carolina or Tennessee, records show that early in his career he traveled as an "Electro-Medic Doctor" whose question of "Are you a Manly man full of youth and vigor?" set the theme for a life of unparalleled economic success in spite of this early trail of bad checks and unpaid bills. He failed to finish medical school; once he met the Dean of John Hopkins University who advised young Brinkley to "seek another type of employment." His 'legitimacy' started with a diploma from a School of Herbalists, "The Eclectic Medical University of Kansas City, which taught herbal doctrine, chiropractic homeopathy, and naturopathy. Eight states recognized this school's diploma.
He married Minnie, the daughter of a doctor, and moved to Milford, Kansas where, upon seeing this 'wide spot in the road', she cried. They opened a drugstore and doctor's office and lived in a third room.
The Legend: One day a mysterious Mr. X come in complaining of lack of vigor and probably prostate problems, saying "I used to be as frisky as a goat!" and Doc probably said "You don't have the glands of a goat," so the patient countered "Well why don't you put them in then?" Brinkley operated on the man, sacrificing a goat, and Mr. X soon fathered a ten-pound baby boy promptly named Billy.
Other "Doctors" worked with similar theories but used gorillas or ring-tailed monkey glands. In the early days, Doctor Brinkley even let patients select their own goat! He reported to other eclectic doctors on the "Marker of astonishing sexual vigor, which the details can only be hinted at. It can make old men execute young ideas!" The fifteen-minute operation cured impotence, insanity, hardened arteries, prostate problems, high blood pressure, skin disease, old age, and turn gray hair dark again. Half an operation, half a head of gray hair!
Since a majority of older men would someday suffer prostate problems, Brinkley's clientele seemed endless. Stories appeared in newspapers mixing his fundamentalist beliefs against evolution with the message of his goat-gland science, screaming headlines such as "Goat-Glands Rejuvenate Kansas Village" and "Japan Makes Gland Transplantation Compulsory". He designed his own drugs, some christened with names like "Sexaline". People called him the Burbank of Humanity.
He mailed out press releases and flyers, and earned enough money to travel while visiting rich client's homes to perform the operation.
Radio: In Los Angeles he operated on the owner of the Los Angeles Times, Henry Chandler (the Dorothy Chandler pavilion hosts the Oscar awards every year) and several other employees. There Doctor Brinkley discovered a new technology, radio, from Henry who owned one of the first stations in the United States.
Back in Kansas, Brinkley started KFKB, "Kansas' First, Kansas' Best, Home of Goat-gland Transplantation" and with its 1000 Watts of power he beamed a mix of jazz and rejuvenation across the nation and halfway across the Atlantic on a good night. It became the nation's "Most Popular Radio Station" and soon Brinkley at times received 23,000 pieces of mail, requiring a new Milford Post Office which Brinkley paid for!
People would crowd around their radio, as we do today around the TV, in living rooms across the nation to hear descriptions of ailments and other 'delicate' topics, followed by Brinkley's promise of cures and relief, always prescribing his own manufactured and numbered medicines over the air. He probably stocked close to one-thousand drugstores in the listening area. Brinkley especially encouraged elderly men, with lines such as "A man is as old as his glands", to visit his new Milford hospital, which contained an educational 'trophy room' containing preserved appendices and other body parts.
At approximately $750 per visit in YESTERDAY'S dollars, he made millions! His practice flourished along with his fame; he became an Admiral in the Kansas Navy(!), and traveled the world performing operations as he went. He visited the Royal University of Pavia in Italy and received a diploma without examination. Using that, he joined the British Medical Association, which enabled him to practice throughout the British Empire. Later they requested he return those diplomas, and when he didn't, they revoked his subscription to the British Medical Journal .
Politics: Eventually, his enemies within the American Medical Association convinced the State of Kansas to revoke his medical license, which prompted friends to suggest he run for Governor of the State of Kansas and reinstate his own license! Too late to get on the ballot, he began teaching listeners how to spell his name for a write-in candidacy and campaigned with his special truck and one of the first private airplanes. He swooped out of the ether like a god, promising to pasture his goats on the statehouse lawn, promising a lake in every county, free schoolbooks, no property tax, free medicine, and shorter trains. He used religious fundamentalism to draw parallels between his life and the persecuted Jesus. Historians now admit he actually won the election, but it was stolen from him. He won counties in Oklahoma and his written name appeared on ballots across the nation! They say bales of votes for Brinkley got tossed into the rivers in Kansas. After three years of this fight, he lost both his station and license to practice medicine in Kansas, so he left Milford, bulldozing his hospital to the ground. In retaliation, the people chipped his name off the front of the stone drugstore.
San Felipe "Del Rio", Texas: Brinkley feared the government and the fledgling Communications Commission, and after an examination of border communities, decided to move his operation to Del Rio. He put a radio station XER in tiny Villa Acuña. He arrived on November first, 1933; with a forty-person retinue of talent and soon began broadcasting with The Story Lady, Rose Dawn the Astrologer, Dr. Brinkley's Medical Question Box, Koran the Mystic Knight of the Mayan Order, and other music and religious programs. They sold baby chicks, peices of Jesus' cross, guitar lessons, Hypnotism and publications such as Brinkley's "Doctor Book" which became a "bestseller", pulling fabulous amounts of money every month. Del Rio became known as "Dollar Rio" becasue everything cost a dollar!

Border Blasting: Eventually the station upgraded to a record million watts effective power with an antennae array pointed to Europe. It killed birds, lit light bulbs, and drowned out all other signals. People claimed they could hear it in their tooth fillings and bedsprings. To Europe and even beyond, when climactic conditions allowed, the signal carried the voice of this 'good neighbor and friend' broadcasting his message of hope; of freedom from aging, infirmity, and especially the older man's sexual impotence.
Opulence: John, wife Minnie, and son Johnny Boy (first person to sing "Happy Birthday" on the radio) traveled the world and enjoyed almost royal attention and press wherever they landed. He returned from a trip to the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador with giant tortoises, penguins, and home movies of the trip. The doctor spent lavishly; on yachts, jewelry, land, clothing, fleets of sixteen-cylinder Cadillacs with his name inscribed sixteen times in the gold trim, diamonds, and opened beautiful hospitals in Little Rock, Arkansas; McAllen, Texas and in the top three floors of Del Rio's Roswell Hotel, but his only lasting monument remains the Brinkley Mansion.
The Brinkley Mansion: Even though a jury of Del Rio citizens ruled against him in his 'hometown' libel lawsuit against the American Medical Association (which legitimized the term "Quack" to describe his medical status) he remains a beloved folk hero to many local citizens. He employed over three hundred people, gave lavish Christmas parties for the poor, and became a vital and famous part of the community.
An elegant example of Mission architecture, the Brinkley Mansion, located in the 500 block of Qualia Drive in Del Rio, boasts the most advanced technology of its time. A park Brinkley built across the street allowed locals to watch the flamingos, penguins, and giant Galapagos tortoises mingle amongst marble statuary lit by colored neon lights. The yard spread across sixteen acres behind three pair of "Brinkley" emblazoned iron gates. From the 132 foot-long tiled lanai walkway outside, guests would pass through the nine-foot cathedral doors into the ballroom richly paneled in royal black walnut. The china and crystal tableware were gifts from his friend Mussolini, and some say among the swimming pool's tiles the swastika design could be found, and that Brinkley possibly transmitted espionage messages via organ music and radio!
At one party, fifty local high school "geisha" girls served hundreds of guests as two fountains, from the Chicago World's Fair of 1929, danced in a blaze of colored lights and music surged up from the huge pipe organ in the basement where 1,063 pipes built into the walls of the three stories occupied five rooms! The party's end included a fireworks show that spelled 'goodnight' across the dark sky while giant spotlights darted and lit the clouds of smoke.
"Doctor" John Romulus Brinkley probably died of stress from the confiscation of his radio station; on June 20th, 1941 he suffered a coronary occlusion, Aug. 23rd a blood clot in the leg, Aug. 28th amputation, Sept. 1st heart failure, on September 23rd the US Post Office slapped him with a twelve million dollar mail fraud suit, on Dec. 22nd another heart failure, and on May 26th, 1942 he died at his home in San Antonio.

This excerpt from a real piece of work called "The Two JRB's Tour Guide of Val Verde and Coahuila", where the ghosts of "Doctor" Brinkley and Judge Roy Bean lead us around the Oasis of West Texas and Mexico for some great Coahuilan desert snorkeling, might soon be released as a hardcover coffee table book, part of a publication on CD-ROM and with high-resolution multi-media; photographs, sound and music, filmclips, artwork, and textual ruminations.

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