Bedside Manners 7: The Making of a Man

health and wellness. And he did it in the heart of London and what would look something like a huge piece of performance art today. John's looks and bravado had gotten him a long way. He was smart, he was arrogant, and he described himself not just as a doctor of the body, but of the soul. Like many folks of his time, John saw the money to be made in driving cures. One avenue into this industry that he tried was becoming a surgeon, but he never graduated from medical school.

For some time he took to the American colonies to study with the luminaries of the day. It's said that in Philadelphia he learned about electricity from one of Benjamin Franklin's collaborators, but fled back to London at the outbreak of the American Revolution. He continued traveling the continent in search of healing remedies and of course, a quick buck.

Upon his return to London, and with some success and followers in tow, he opened up his Temple of Health and Hymen on the River Thames in seventeen eighty one. Graham's Temple was a brilliant site made of stone and soaring columns and air perfumed with spice and flowers. Candelabrus glistened, and light beams danced on the mirrors as visitors were welcome to walk the halls. There were tall stained glass windows in lecture halls and shops to buy bottles of potions.

A large statue of the Goddess Hyman herself was carved in stone, seemingly looking over and out for everyone who entered her domain. The centerpiece of John's newly opened temple, as you now know, was his enormous canopied nine by twelve foot celestial bed. Though he advertised a myriad of treatments to the general public, this was the one that turned the most heads, and for good reason. It held promise for couples who dreamed of conceiving, and was designed

with the latest in technological advancements. The bed moved with the arduous pair, maximizing its angle for conception. It was held aloft by forty glass pillars flushed with magnets and electrical currents. Movements from the bed queued a set of pipe organs that played in rhythm and time of the people romping around, a true erotic cacophony. Although we don't have any recordings of this, the research promises that these

sounds were more celestial than one might think. He sold the idea of procreation to the general public as a patriotic duty. But under that veneer, John was getting away with something else. He was talking free about sex, and he made an entire spectacle of it, a spectacle in which those who had experienced shame around infertility could pay good money for the latest technological solution to their woes. He was quick to give out health and life advice,

and people would pay him for that privilege. What John had done was tappened to something that Charlatan's had long been in the game of They profited on hopes and dreams through smoke and mirrors and sly smiles. He was handsome and charming and undoubtedly had the appeal to sell sex and solutions. He wasn't the first or the last person to sweet talk their way into people's wallets with

extreme promises alongside legitimate medical marvels. The history of medicine is likewise filled with bad ideas based on good intentions, and of course the opposite existed as well, bad ideas with much more selfish intent and harmful outcomes. Sometimes the intentions of those in the remedy business were hard to discern, especially when they dealt with deeply personal problems, the kind that were only whispered about for many. That was a world of fear and shame, fertile ground that some of

the greediest Charlatans thrived off of. I'm Aaron Manke and welcome to bedside Manners. John Romulus Brinkley mixed up a tonic and remembered his father fondly. His dad had been a mountain man and folk healer, conscripted into the Civil War as a medic before returning to his beloved North Carolina. There he studied with a country doctor, creating a practice deeply based in the mountains he loved. Little John had always wanted to grow up to be like his dad.

To become a proper doctor, he was told he had to attend medical school. The price tag for such an endeavor, however, was way out of the question. He didn't have money, but he sure dreamt of it. John grew up, left his home and got a job as a telegraph operator. This seemed like the best option for him at the time, and he was good at it. He made a soaring forty five dollars per month, but still he felt dissatisfied.

One day he was called home. John's aunt, the last of the people who had raised him, was dying, and he would be the one to put her into the family cemetery. Standing at her grave side, he was taken with a pretty blonde who he had known earlier in life. Their courtship began, and he and Sallie Wilke married about a month later, in January of nineteen oh seven. He and Salie's marriage would prove to be a tumultuous one, but she found it within herself to stick with him,

at least for a little while. This is how she found herself as John's assistant for his traveling medicine show, moving from town to town and hawking various nostrums and cures, charming local residence with promises and answers. He was witty and entertaining to boots, performing songs and skits that extolled the virtues of everything he had to sell. The machine that was the itinerant medicine show in which John had gotten himself wrapped up in was reaching its peak popularity

in the early twentieth century. These shows sold songs and promises, all wrapped up in spectacle and canvas as their wagons rolled through town. Performers and salespeople sold patent medicines, typically proprietary blended tonics that claimed to cure everything from blindness to hair loss, to wrinkles and gout, and just about

all the other things in between. Now the snake oil salesman was the figure who rose to prominence during this time and permanently cemented himself in our vocabulary as shorthand for a huckster. The snake oil that was sold at shows was largely just a riff on a topical healing oil that was brought by Chinese immigrants who worked the

Western railroads. What was actually in the jars that Brinkley and his ilk sold, well, that was their secret to keep Now, as anyone who's done seasonal or gig works know, it's a hard life. He and Sally eventually found themselves in Chicago, and he with a steadier paycheck working for Western Union, but he hated it. The dreams of practicing real medicine had never left him. He would just find another way. As medicine became more of a professional endeavor,

medical schools popped up across the country. However, not all of these institutions were created equal. The worst of the worst were simply diploma mills, or anyone who could pay enough to get a piece of paper could call themselves a doctor. In eighteen forty seven, the American Medical Association was founded as an answer to all of this. Their goal was to legitimize facilities and sniff out the quacks. They did their best, but it was often like playing

whack a mole. By June of nineteen oh eight, John submitted an application and had found his way to Bennett Colectic Medical College in Chicago. While enrolled there, he did double duty as a student and telegraph operator, managing to estrange his wife and split from his family in the process. He quit school with the year left to go, figuring that he had learned enough to get a leg up.

Or maybe not. You see, he would eventually enroll in the eclectic Medical University of Kansas City, an institution which the American Medical Association and the licensing boards of forty different states refused to recognize because of alleged unethical practices.

He eventually left there too, and received a diploma from the Kansas City College of Medicine, an infamous diploma mill It allowed him to register for a medical license in Arkansas, which at that time had reciprocity in several other states. But it wasn't just his brief attendance at medical school that would decidedly change the trajectory of John's career. No, it was something else. He found himself traveling the Midwest during the heyday of the meat packing industry, and sometimes

inspiration strikes in the most unlikely of places. You see. While working his job one day as the resident surgeon for the Swift and Company meatpacking plant in Kansas City, Missouri, he was watching goats in the last moments of their life, they continued to exhibit vim and vigor and enthusiasm for their lady penmates. He was regaled with tales of the heartiness of these particular goats, and of their ability to

stay healthy even in the most disgusting of conditions. What if, he thought to himself, we humans could glean some of this vigor ourselves from these animals, And all of a sudden an idea began to crystallize, and without knowing it, John's next chapter had begun to right itself. John knew

an opportunity when he saw one. In nineteen sixteen, he had answered an ad in a paper that was calling for a town doctor in Milford, Kansas, population two hundred, and he hoped that he might even stay there for a while. The intervening years had taken John all over, working odd jobs and running from debt collectors. He had been in the army, although briefly before a nervous breakdown earned him a discharge. He had found himself a new wife too, though it would later be revealed that he

had failed to divorce his first. In Tennessee, he had spent some time playing doctor and employing his old medicine show tricks. Working at what was essentially a proto strip mall franchise for men and their venereal diseases, he put on a good show, selling supposed cures too sad and desperate men. What happened next has been presented in history as fact, but it very well could be a legend of John's own making. It was recounted in a book he later published about his life when he had become

very rich and somewhat infamous. As the story goes, an old farmer walked into his office one day. He told John that he was having trouble in the bedroom and that his ability to show up to the task had been non existent. The farmer said it was unfortunate that he didn't have billy goat nuts before laughing at his own joke. But John wasn't laughing. He was inspired. The goat has a long cross cultural reputation for its frisky ways. The animal has been characterized in ancient texts and fables

as horn and insatiable pan. The half goat half man in ancient Greek mythology is a figure that comes to mind, so it is one of the world's oldest aphrodisiac recipes from an eighth century Buddhist text that called for you guessed it, goat testicles. John later said that it was the farmer's idea and that he insisted on the surgery. However it happened. The farmer came back that night. He dropped his pants and climbed onto John's table, and there,

naked as the day he was born. John sliced open his scrotum, inserted pieces of goat testicles, and then stitched him back up. The farmer came back two weeks later, all healed up and with a check for one hundred and fifty dollars. According to John's telling, the farmer claim that he would have given him more if he could. The operation, it seems, was a success, and because whispered networks are strong in a small town, more men would soon be arriving on his doorstep. He proceeded with another

operation on a man who desperately wanted a child. When he was all healed up, he brought his wife in for goat's ovary. They wanted to double down on their efforts, it seems, and as the story goes, they had a healthy baby boy a year later. Thanks to John Brinkley. They aptly named him Billy, even as he continued his usual doctoring duties. Word quickly spread of John's brave new innovation. As it did his visions of dollars signs began to grow. He knew he needed an expert to help further get

the word out, so he hired an ad man. The fellow came down from Kansas City and was immediately sold on John's new operation. It was nothing short of finding the fountain of youth, he thought, and advised John to advertise in newspapers, flyers, and mailers. Accordingly, he applied for a feature in the Journal of the American Medical Association and was soon met with unequivocal rejection for his practice. Medicine's governing body thought that he was bad news, but

it appears that many people did not. This all might seem unbelievable that John was actually helping his patients we hear of the success stories, But is also true is that John had something else working on his side the cultural taboo around talking about sex. The operation, you see, was simple. He wasn't fundamentally altering the person's plumbing, but

rather just inserting some extra biological material under the skin. Those, of course, posed a large risk of infection and rejection, but in the instances where this happened or bedroom activities never improved, the shame was heavy, and the willingness of patients to speak on such matters was hard to muster.

Even so, he began to attract higher profile clients who not only showed up at his practice but saying his praises, notably the chancellor of the University of Chicago Law School, who traveled to Milford to have the operation done and was so happy with it that he awarded John an honorary Doctor of Science degree. A deluge of interest came after that, and the subsequent and nearly immediate opening of a new hospital in Milford followed. In September of nineteen eighteen.

It was less than a year after the family arrived in John and his wife, Minnie, broke ground for the Brinkley Jones Hospital and Training School for nurses, notably, as the school's vice president, Minnie signed her own diploma. In time, the community would be buoyed by his money and his newfound fame, as he committed his dollars to public works improvement projects all over town. By nineteen twenty four. He was well on his way to building an empire. Patients

had come from across Europe and South America. Some even made their way to Milford from South Asia and the South Pacific. Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth registered as nothing more than a legend in their collective imaginations. They now had the real deal, John Romulus Brinkley's glandular therapy. It wouldn't be long before John's wallet grew thick and the American Medical Association began to follow his trail. He

had gotten their attention. They knew that he wasn't an accredited doctor to begin with, tracing his education back to diploma mills and incomplete studies. They believe that he was blatantly fleecing good folks out of their hard money. Basically, they believed that John was once again back to his old medicine show tricks, but this time in a gussied upsetting. The AMA saw him as dangerous, but that didn't matter.

John Brinkley's stardom would continue to climb, and if they had any hope of catching him at all, it would take everything they had to understand the meteoric rise of John Brinkley. We first need to understand the culture in which he existed. He was able to blend the old world with the new and made that specific moment work to his advantage. First, the old world, there were a lot of mistakes that were made over the thousands of

years we've been trying to understand the body. Galen, if you remember, never operated on a person and believe that animals were an adequate substitute. In a way that seems not too dissimilar. Physicians and surgeons of John's time believe that oregan transplants between animals and humans were a good

solution to many problems. In the early eighteen nineties, a fellow by the name of Charles Edward Brown Cicard experimented with glandular therapy by making extracts of dog, guinea pig, and monkey testes and injecting them into his own body. It was thought that these tissues could enhance the function of a human body's corresponding tissues. Is see cultures around the world have long prized organ meat for being nutritious.

It would make sense then that physicians might believe here that like supports like we've seen this across the ages in regards to sympathetic magic and medicine, and it makes sense that this practice edged its way into modernity after Charles Edward's experimentation, he claimed rejuvenation like he had never experienced before, and this set off a cascade of interest in manufacturing youth and promised that science could finally turn

back the body's clock. Other doctors began to follow suit with glandular therapy experiments, which resulted in thousands of men claiming to have been reinvigorated by injections or outright implantation. That said, there were many naysayers who claimed that these treatments provided nothing more than a placebo effect, but that didn't stop people from latching on hard to the hope

that this kind of therapy could work for them. By the early nineteen twenties, it was estimated that there were over seven hundred practitioners in the United States alone that offered some type of glandular treatment. John R. Brinkley was just one of these people, and by all accounts, one of the most successful. John had a way with people, as demonstrated earlier with his success in the Medicine Show. Growing up in North Carolina's Hill Country, he was of

the people. His affability and cunning allowed him to transcend the class he was born into in an odd way. He began to monetize his charm, but he was still being received as the corn fed country doctor, even as he began moving into mansions and signing for fancy cars. He leaned on this image as he employed teams of public relations specialists to plan stories about his procedure in

publications across the world. His career went global, and he took his knife on the road, slicing into the likes of movie stars and businessmen, young and old, all who wished for a second shot at youth. His appeal was almost universal in a culture that so drastically feared aging. He took his potential cocktail of legend, curiosity and fear and blended it all up with cutting edge technology enter the radio. Radio technology was used by other medical personalities

at the time to sell their services. Think about them as earlier versions of doctor Oz or doctor Phil, but John Brinkley was particularly good at it. It was his voice and the transmission of his message that helped usher in the next chapter of his career. John obtained his radio license in nineteen twenty three and began broadcasting on KFKB, his own private station. It proved to be a potent instrument as it carried his message into thousands of homes

across the Midwest. It was part entertainment, part Collin Show, and part gospel. It seemed that there was nothing that John couldn't provide. He made it onto the radio, and the radio helped make him. His listeners were invited to call the Good Doctor about their ailments. On air, John would take their messages and stories about what ailed them and listen thoughtfully. He would then prescribe his own proprietary antidotes, which listeners were then encouraged to purchase through his own

private pharmacy. It gave those at home the idea too, about how they could cure themselves. He was a one man web MD before such a thing ever existed, and his phone continued to ring off the hook and his physical practice boomed. By one estimate, he was making the current equivalent of about half a million dollars per week from his office there in Milford, Kansas, enough to eke out a living fit for a king. The American Medical Association, though, was trying their darndest to put an end to what

they saw as Charlatanism. In the end, forty two people would die as a result of his operations, the thousands more having gone under his scalpel and stitch. In fact, the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a man named Morris Fishbeine, was particularly keen on making sure that John was stripped of his practice and exposed for the fraud that he believed him to be, having

worked for years to mount a case against him. In September of nineteen thirty, the Kansas State Medical Board convened in Milford to observe an operation by John Brinkley. The twelve members of the board squeezed themselves along the walls of John's small operating room and nodded greetings to his patients. Mister X on the table. In a moment's time, Minny

Brinkley brought forth a baby goat. With just a few snips, he was relieved of his testicles, and in forty five minutes time, pieces of them would belong to the lucky mister X. Less than two days later, the Kansas State Medical Board would unequivocally revoke John's license on the grounds of organized Charlatanism. Maurice Fishbeine had decidedly won this battle, but he hadn't yet won the war. John refused to

go quietly. In fact, he got louder. He amped up his efforts on the radio waves and eventually ran for governor of Kansas. He decided that if he won, he would appoint his own medical board. However, John thankfully lost, and with it he soon lost his radio license. Not only that, but postal inspectors began building a mail fraud case against him. So in nineteen thirty three, he decamped his entire operation to a small Texan border town named

Del Rio. From there, he set up a radio station named xe R A right next door in Mexico where he could legally still broadcast. From there, he continued broadcasting right back into the US, spreading his very specific flavor of medicinal gospel. Even still, Morris Fishbeine wasn't finished with him. In nineteen thirty eight, he published a two part series in the American Medical Association's magazine entitled Modern Medical Charlatans that aimed to take John Brinkley and every thing he

stood for down. Yet John wasn't going down without a fight. Armed with a team of the best lawyers, he sued Morris for libel, but this proved to be his undoing. The trial began on March twenty second of nineteen thirty nine, soon after John's world began to crumble. In the trial, he was formerly linked to the diploma mills, and it became clear that he had no real medical license. The

lawsuits began to pour in and his practice collapsed. The IRS mounted an investigation into tax fraud, and John was forced to file for bankruptcy, which shortly preceded the US Postal Services investigation into widespread accusations of mail fraud. As it was linked to his practice. It was a house of cards, and it had all come tumbling down. His heart attacks, three in all, came swiftly and fiercely. John died of heart failure in nineteen forty two, utterly penniless.

The supposed healer of so many people had been unable to cure himself, and the aftermath of his career is a bit see Yes, Maurice Fishbeine was correct that John had purchased his degrees, inflated his mythology, and sought to exploit the vulnerable to get rich. But it's still believed by some that glandular therapies are legitimates and can be helpful. In fact, Mayo Clinic rheumatologist doctor Philip S. Hench was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work in this area.

But thankfully those treatments look a bit different now than they did back in John Brinkley's time. These days, the glandular derivatives are taken in pill form, readily available at your local supplement shop. A quick scan will reveal pills made from animal proteins that suggest that they can support spleens and thiamuses, and testicles and prostates, among other things. These pill bottles, like fat screwtop soldiers, can often be found stacked up and down the wall of a shop

promising a cure for this ailments and then some. And it makes you wonder how far we've come from the days of the Traveling Medicine Show, which was ripe with hope and promises, all of which could be yours for just a few dollars. The world of medicine is full of mysteries and surprises. In historically two has been full of smoke and mirrors, but sometimes behind all of that

something amazing appears. And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, my teammate Robin Miniter, will tell you all about one such discovery. To the untrained eye, a desert can seem barren, it's hot, it's cold, and it can sometimes be hostile. But when Carti's house Springer laid eyes on almost thirteen thousand acres of California's Mojave Desert,

he knew that its potential was no mirage. The last of the medicine men, as he liked to call himself, saw the making of an oasis at the end of the four mile long dirt road, and visions of his big fat bank account. He saw visions of palm trees, blue swimming pools. He saw a hotel and cottages. He imagined phony hot springs materializing, and he saw a remote place all his own where he could conduct his business.

In September of nineteen forty four, he filed for a mining permit in order to secure the land known as Soda Springs for his own extraction. According to the paperwork, but he had other plans. Curtis's first order of business was to round up laborers from Los Angeles skid Row and put them to work constructing a place he called the Zizis Mineral Springs and Health Resort. Zizis would function as a retreat where he promised internal, external, and eternal cleanliness,

all for a price. Of course, he was offering holistic and homeopathic cures a variety of proprietary tonics, but as to what exactly was in all of them, well, that was for him to know and maybe not for guests to find out. To this day, Zizix spelled z zy z x is still the last place listed alphabetically on the American Atlas, an intentional choice, as Curtis wanted it to be the last word in health. Like the other medicine men of his day, It's hard to tell what's

fact from fiction and Curtis's life. By nineteen thirty nine, the tireless American Medical Association published a paper that named him as one of the most infamous quacks of the era, cutting down any claims that he had any kind of degree or any medical school training whatsoever. That didn't stop him, though, from having a prolific career over the syndicated radio waves. Like his contemporaries, who were also in on the game.

This gave him ample opportunity to charm his way into the home and pockets of anyone who turned the dial. Curtis continued to build his proverbial house on a foundation of sand, also erecting a chapel in lecture halls, a boulevard, and even a man made lake, And for over thirty years, those committed to the Gospel of health came lounged and drank their concoctions by the pool. They did this happily

until they didn't. By nineteen sixty nine, the year that the Ama Crown Curtis the King of the Quacks, he had been arrested for fraud, but not medical fraud. The Bureau of Land Management, not exactly a stranger to the operation he was running, but surely tired of it, caught word that he was attempting to sell parcels of zizziks to his generous stoners. The problem was, though, that this was in his land to sell, he didn't own it.

In nineteen seventy four, he was convicted of squatting and given less than three days to completely evacuate himself and the three decades of his life's work. Curtis certainly lied a lot about who he was and what his accomplishments were, but it seems a lot of the advice he gave a sound and doctors still recommend much of it today, For example, get plenty of rest, stay hydrated, eat your vegetables, have some lean meat, get some sun, don't drink, don't

do drugs. And as it turns out, there was some real wisdom among his smoke and mirrors if you could find it. We might never know all the recipes for his alleged miracles, but we do know that for the most part, they were actually quite harmless. It turns out that he was particularly heavy handed with baking soda, an ingredient that we still frequently used today in certain in

ascids like Alca, saltzer, and Yes. While Curtis did prey on the rich, selling them mysterious cares for a pretty penny, it's also said that no one was ever turned away from his resort because of lack of funds. He may have been a charlatan, but in certain situations at least he was a philanthropic. One Grim and Mild Presents Bedside Manners was executive produced by Aaron Manky and narrated by

Aaron Manky and Robin Miniter. Writing for this season was provided by Robin Miniter, with research by Sam Alberty, Taylor Haggerdorn, and Robin Miniter. Production assistance was provided by Josh Thayne, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. You can learn more about this show, the Grim and Mild team, and all the other podcasts that we make over at grimm Mild dot com, and, as always, thanks for listening