The Bizarre Careers of John R. Brinkley
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University of Kentucky UKnowledge United States History History 2002 The Bizarre Careers of John R. Brinkley R. Alton Lee University of South Dakota Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Lee, R. Alton, "The Bizarre Careers of John R. Brinkley" (2002). United States History. 118. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/118 The Bizarre Careers of John R. Brinkley 7 \ CAREERE.R.IS JOHNR. BRINKLEY Copyright © 2002 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 02 03 04 05 06 5 4 3 2 1 Frontispiece: Dr. John R. Brinkley in surgery. (Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lee, R. Alton. The bizarre careers of John R. Brinkley / R. Alton Lee. p. ; cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8131-2232-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Brinkley, John Richard, 1885-1942. 2. Quacks and quackery—United States—Biography. 3. Quacks and quackery— Mexican-American Border Region—Biography. 4. Radio broadcasters- Mexican-American Border Region—Biography. [DNLM: 1. Brinkley, John Richard, 1885-1942. 2. Famous Persons—United States- Biography. 3. Quackery—history—United States. 4. History of Medicine, 20th Cent.—United States—Biography. WZ 310 L479b 2002] I. Title. R730 .L39 2002 615.856'092—dc21 2001007144 av\ Ljn Contents Acknowledgments ix Preface xi 1. Humble Origins 1 2. Toggenberg Goats 29 3. Radio Advertising 61 4. Beset by Enemies 90 5. Brinkleyism 118 6. Hands Across the Border 153 7. The Old Cocklebur 181 8. Decline and Fall 211 9. Postscript 231 10. Conclusions 236 Notes 245 Sources 267 Index 273 Acknowledgments ny people—librarians, archivists, history buffs, scholars, friends—contribute to the research and writing of a volume such as this. In naming those who stand out in my recollections, I run the risk of omitting some who deserve credit for their assistance. The archivists at the Kansas History Center, Robert Tenuta of the Ameri- can Medical Association's archives, the staff at Hale Library of Kan- sas State University, and those at Manhattan Public Library have my special thanks, as does Lee Lincoln of the Whitehead Memorial Museum in Del Rio, Texas, Randy Roberts of the Axe Library at Pittsburg (Kansas) State University, and Carol King of the Geary County Historical Society Museum in Junction City. Dr. Walter McKim of Milford, who is one of the promoters of a Brinkley Mu- seum there, was helpful, as was Betty Foxx of Sylva, North Caro- lina. Because of her interest in local history, she welcomed a Kansan with an odd accent and helped locate pertinent sources in that area. Several people have assisted enormously in improving the writing and content of the book. Professors Tom Isern of North Dakota State University, Homer Socolofsky of Kansas State University, Gerald W. Wolff of the University of South Dakota, James Harvey Young of Emory University, and Stephen Barrett, M.D., deserve special thanks in this regard. My wife Marilyn, to whom this volume is dedicated, played her usual part in encouraging my efforts, fulfilling the role of helpful traveling companion on research trips, and critiquing the manuscript. I owe her more than she will ever realize. h i e there is widespread discussion and concern about female menopause, less is said or known about its male counterpart. This phase of the life cycle has troubled both genders since the begin- ning of time. In men, the male sex hormone, testosterone, declines with age, beginning about forty. Though the decline is gradual and only amounts to approximately 10 percent per decade, it results in the loss of the sex drive, weakening of muscles, and calcium defi- ciency in bones. Women in menopause can receive supplements of the sex hormones estrogen and progesterone to ease the transition, but for males testosterone replacement may enlarge the prostate gland and increase the possibility of cancer in that gland. Symp- toms vary among men, but at about age sixty the prostate begins to enlarge year by year, a process known as benign prostate hy- pertrophy—and it becomes more difficult to urinate. Most impor- tant to many men is the deterioration of potency that accompanies the aging process, and man has long sought relief, or a cure, for this retrogression.1 Methods of overcoming impotency have a lengthy history of investigation in many differing categories and civilizations. Certain foods, for example, have long been held to be sexually arousing. The Chinese have a venerable tradition that ginseng root is a wondrous stimulant. Eggs and caviar are often associated with sex, as well as celery, asparagus, clams, and oysters—foods that suggest sex or- gans. Ancient Greeks and Romans used satyricon preparations, usually made from goats, as an aphrodisiac. The Greeks also be- lieved that drinking onion juice for three days increased virility. Quasi-scientists have developed innumerable medicines and devices reputed to increase sexual potency. In the mid-eighteenth century, London doctor John Graham O.W.L. (which stood for Oh Wonderful Love), made a fortune by charging believers to sleep on his electric- coiled "celestial bed." The bed bathed sleepers in colored lights, while soft music played in the background and incense burned, and came complete with a guarantee to increase the participants' sexual po- XII 1—V^ tency. Infertile couples paid as much as £100 to spend a night on his apparatus. Any kind of machine or analyzer with voltic power as its basis, however ludicrous the claims of the owner, fascinates the sexually impotent or hypochondriac. As James Harvey Young explained it, electricity has "always provided a tremendous storehouse of power for quackery." At the turn of the nineteenth century, Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer of Paris cured his patients with wands and magnets. Dur- ing his labors he added a word to our vocabulary when, by seren- dipity, he discovered the roots of hypnotism while trying to help a blind girl.2 Leonard E. Stanhope, one of Dr. Mesmer's disciples, possessed a D.D.S. and an M.D. from the Homeopathic College of Missouri in St. Louis. In the late 1890s, he discovered his "vast magnetic pow- ers," as he termed them, and opened the Stanhope Sanitarium and School of Magnetic Healing in Nevada, Missouri. This healing, or as some called it "suggestive therapeutics" through hypnotism, became quite popular in the Nevada area, with a listing of these doctors requiring a half-page in the city telephone directory in 1900. The town's ministers found the practice "subversive of the fundamental and vital principles of the Christian faith" and organized in opposi- tion, publishing a pamphlet to warn potential victims of the threat. Magnetic healing's popularity "declined as rapidly as it began" with the assistance of the good preachers, and in 1903 only three such doctors were listed in that telephone directory.3 Americans also have been unusually susceptible to the blan- dishments of therapists with odd ideas or contraptions. Dr. Albert Abrams of San Francisco was one of the more famous of these prac- titioners, advocating a theory he called Spondylotherapy, which made use of a strange looking magnetic box to conduct his examinations. He was a distinguished-looking man with pince-nez glasses who began his career as a legitimate doctor but soon realized there were more lucrative sidelines to his profession. His diagnostic machine, sometimes called an "etherator," contained a maze of electrical wir- ing. One end he plugged into an electric outlet, and the other he attached to the forehead of a healthy third person. A drop of blood from the patient was placed on a piece of paper inside the box. Abrams then tapped the abdomen of the healthy person, who had to face west during the procedure. By listening to the resonating sounds, he claimed he could diagnose the person's illness, its location in the body, and even its severity. With further experience, he discovered that he could also determine during the analysis the patient's gen- der, age, and affiliation with one of six religious groups. He refused to sell his machines, which he called the "Electric Reactions of Abrams," but he rented the ERAs to customers. Among others, writer Upton Sinclair was one of the doctor's most vocal supporters. The novelist's recommendation of the procedure, of course, was as salu- tary as getting an explanation from abBe Ruth about the concept of E=mc2 or an approval from Frank Sinatra on the military decision to drop the atomic bomb, but his endorsement added substantially to the doctor's reputation in the mind of the public. Abrams's rental fee for the ERA was $250; for $200 more, he would provide a semi- nar on how to operate his machine. When he died in 1923 he left an estate of some $2 million.4 More recently, at Clinique La Prairie in Switzerland, "injecting live sheep cells is said to be the path to youth." A recent issue of Modern Maturity carried a full-page ad for "Quanterra," a saw pal- metto extract that has been "clinically proven by doctors" to im- prove the "prostate health of men over 50." Berries from the saw palmetto tree have a long history of folk use for disorders in the male reproductive tract.