Medicine: Goat Glands & Sunshine

“We want to broadcast sunshine. Give Dr. Brinkley your medical problems. He will tell you the truth even if it makes you mad. I discharge my obligation to society when I urge you to have an examination every six months. Ninety-nine out of 100 won’t, but I’m after that hundredth. Before you have your prostate gland removed send 25^ to the Brinkley Hospital for booklets.”

The merchants of Del Rio, Tex., chuckled and rubbed their hands together. Kansas politicians shook with apprehension. Quack-baiting Editor Morris Fishbein of the American Medical Association’s Journal cursed through his teeth. Goat-bearded, goat-gland-graftingDr. John Richard Brinkley was at it again last week.

Long has Dr. Brinkley been a thorn in the side of the A. M. A. More recently he gave Kansas politicians the scare of their lives. Soon after the War he ap peared in the crossroads village of Milford, Kan. and set himself up as a phy sician after obtaining a license by reciprocity from Arkansas. (His Arkansas license had been granted on the strength of a diploma from the Kansas City Eclectic Medical University, since exposed as a “diploma mill.”) Dr. Brinkley built a radio station. KFKB, broadcast jazz music interrupted by lectures on rejuvenation. Soon he had transformed the lectures into a clinic, prescribing medicine by radio to patients whom he had never seen but who had written to him describing their ail ments. The prescriptions were identified by code numbers; patients were told where to purchase the medicines. Kansas drug gists, who had suffered because many Kansas physicians filled their own prescriptions, soon found that Dr. Brinkley’s prescriptions paid the rent. His Milford Drug Co. made up the prescriptions.

Dr. Brinkley prospered, Milford boomed. The broadcasting business was augmented by a hospital, where Dr. Brinkley or one of his corps of assistantswould transplant goat gonads into senile patients for null per operation. Fromhis station he would advertise his hospital, which grew & grew, soonwas using 60 goats a month. Milford got a second-class postoffice as a result of Dr. Brinkley’s 3.ooo-letters-a-day mail. The doctor built a $100.000 sanatorium, bought four new automobiles, planned apartment houses and bungalows for employes, a $50.000 “Brinkley Methodist Memorial Church,” with chimes and a “Brinkley Memorial Organ” and a tablet that read:

“Erected to God and His Son, Jesus, in appreciation of many blessingsconferred upon me: J. R. Brinkley.”

By then Kansas physicians were up in arms. The State Medical Board moved to revoke his license. Dr. Brinkley produced dozens of ex-patients who swore they had obtained their money’s worth. He got affidavits from 500 more. He invited the board members to his hospital to watch the operations on both men and goats. The doctors watched him transplant goat glands into two patients and promptly revoked his license. Dr. Brinkley countered by running for Governor. He entered the race too late to have his name put on the ballot, could not get newspapers to print his advertisements, had to instruct voters how to vote for him by radio. But his broadcast battle cry was “Let’s pasture the goats on the State House lawn!”—and he polled 188,339 votes, only 28.862 less than Successful Candidate Harry Woodring. Dr. Brinkley said he would run again in 1932. Last year readers of Radio Digest voted Station KFKB the “most popular in the world.” Kansas politicians did not breathe easily until the Federal Radio Commission had refused to renew Dr. Brinkley’s license on grounds of “obscenity.” Then they thought they had heard the last of him.

Not so. Dr. Brinkley went to Del Rio, Tex. and began practice under a license which he had in that State.— Across the border in Villa Acuna, Mexico, he built a $350,000 station, obtained a license from the Mexican Government.

Last month Station XER, operating on 735 kilocycles with 75,000-watt power,”the world’s largest broadcasting station”! opened. It was a great day for Del Rio. The six-page Del Rio Evening News published a 24-page supplement full of advertisements all welcoming Dr. Brinkley and XER. Full-page advertisers were headed by the Del Rio Chamber of Commerce, which blurbed: “We have the utmost faith & confidence in Dr. & Mrs. J. R. Brinkley and those who made this great station possible.” Cinema theatres advertised “XER Gala Week” featured by the Four Marx Brothers in Monkey Business. Dr. Brinkley and XER filled seven of the eight columns on the News’s front page. The whole city went on a three-day jubilee, featured by a banquet in honor of Dr. Brinkley. Dr. Brinkley was not there. His plane from Wichita had been forced down and he did not arrive until the next day.

In his first broadcast he announced that .his old Milford medical question box would be on the air daily. Last week he conducted his radio clinic, sending patients to Milford Drug Co. for prescriptions, inviting them to Brinkley Hospital in Milford for diagnosis. Mexican & U. S. medical authorities scratched their heads, puzzled over a ruse by which clever Gland Grafter Brinkley had apparently removed himself from the jurisdiction of either.

For though his programs were broadcast from Mexico, Dr. Brinkley had not crossed the border. He did his broadcasting by remote control from a hotel room in Del Rio. He said he could broadcast from Milford by the same method, explained: “The Milford program would be merely a telephone conversation in the United States and not broadcast until it is in Mexico.” The Mexican Department of Communications last week decided that the Villa Acuna station belonged to “a group composed entirely of Mexicans,” that its erection was in compliance with the law, left the Department of Health to act if it saw fit.

*Last week the Texas Board was seeking to revoke his license.

Largest in North America. Warsaw, Poland has the world’s largest, 158,000 watts.