Episode 686: John Brinkley Part I - New Glands, New Man

There's no place to escape to. This is the last hot cast. On the left. Right up on your glade. That's when the cannibalism started. Who's that? Oh, yeah! Hey now, hey now, don't dream it over. Hey now, hey now. Can I get a hey now? So the meat I was talking about was chivapi. What's chivapi? Little poop meats. Oh, okay. Every culture has little poop meats. Okay. I have no frame of reference for this. Every culture, if you go to, depending on the culture, and you go to various, like the different menus. I've been talking about this for a while. Merguez, kofta. I know kofta. Yeah, kofta's good. What's his spot? Oh, so you're talking about meat nuggets. Yeah. Poops. Poop meats. Henry's now a Balkan. It's poops. It's shaped like poops. Well, it's shaped like nuggets. Like poops. They do look like poops, but they also look delicious. Nuggets I see differently. If they were nuggets, I'd be saying nuggets. Mm-hmm. Man, you're Tzatziki. Shut up, dude. Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. I'm still going to talk about poop meats for every show. It doesn't matter. I don't care what you do. Thank you. Whatever. My name's Marcus Parks. I'm here with a man with a strange new obsession, the hill that I don't know why he's dying on it. It's Henry Zebrowski. I'm not even dying on the hill. I'm just walking over the hill. I'm just on a poop meat hill. I'm dying on the hill because he's eaten too many poop meats and he has a heart attack on top of the hill. My cholesterol is fine. My cholesterol is fine. I can eat as many poop meats as I want. That's what they said. That's protein. Yeah, it is protein. Yeah. And the man who has no problem with protein, it's Ed Larson. I just work here, man. You know what I really, I think what's great about this coming little series here is that what I love is the audience's reaction when we give health advice. Yeah. Yeah. And there's going to be a lot of it here. Yeah. And the things we have to say about health advice. And I think that that's what's great about this episode is that no matter what, we'll be right Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah No we healthy guys Versus this I went to the Cocteau this morning Did you Yeah yeah yeah Did you go to the urologist No no no no no no I haven't been to a urologist since never. Wow. So you're just talking about you masturbated. Yes. You gotta wake up. Very, very good. Yeah, yeah. See, it makes me sleepy. Really? Yeah, it's how I go to sleep. They say you're supposed to do it right before the gym. Right before the gym every time. I actually do it in the- That way you don't finish inside of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The gym. Right in front of Jim. The Jim. Yeah, I normally do at Jim's bedside. Yep, yep, yep. I mostly stick to the foyer. Well, today we are starting a two-part series on John Brinkley, the goat gland man. Flim flams everywhere. Yeah. Flim flam. Dr. John Brinkley was an early 20th century medical flim flam man who became a multimillionaire in the 1920s and 30s by implanting baby goat testicles into the scrotums of desperate men in a bid to cure their impotence. That's a hell of a sentence. All I can imagine is the waves of maturity that we're about to go through. Yeah. How mature we're going to be, how advanced and clever our humor's going to be. This is us at the height. I believe after this one, we may finally be welcomed into Hollywood's intelligentsia. Finally, people like Ann Coulter, Tucker Carlson, the big brain, Seth MacFarlane. Brinkley's goat glam procedure, in which he would implant anywhere from a sliver of a goat testicle to the whole magilla into a man's body, was advertised through Brinkley's own radio station, which, at the time, was one of the most powerful and far-reaching in the entire country. It was also illegal and located just across the border in Mexico to avoid the FCC. Wow! He's one of us! I'm very impressed. So far, I'm going to keep getting impressed by this guy until the very end. I'm just going to be like, he's an asshole. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It ain't going to take long. Yeah. Well, Brinkley used his radio station as a platform for a segment called Medical Question Box, in which Brinkley would diagnose sick people who wrote in about their ailments. He would then prescribe over the radio Brinkley brand cure all potions that were available to purchase at Brinkley aligned pharmacies across America. Most of these cures were of course totally fraudulent but it would take a very long time before Dr Brinkley fraud was brought to light and he would make millions before that time came to pass So he won Not in the end, actually. Well, he kind of did and kind of didn't. It all depends on your definition of winning. In a weird way, it kind of reminds me of James Brown. Remember? Because his singles weren't getting played, and so he just started buying radio stations and then playing it himself. Well, he was smart. Yeah, he was also genius. See, Brinkley was the last of what was supposed to be a dying breed. He was the doctor who told you that every other treatment besides his own was not only useless, but harmful. The only person you could and should trust with your health, Brinkley said, was John Brinkley. I gotta go see John Brinkley. Yeah, where's John Brinkley? But while men like John Brinkley were supposed to remain relics of the past, The rise of the internet in the last decade or so has created a resurgence of people who share quite a bit of DNA with the goat gland man. As such, it's important to note that by the time Brinkley's fraud as a so-called miracle worker was finally exposed, he was alleged to be responsible for the deaths of at least 42 patients. But the road that took John Brinkley from the purveyor of supposed medical miracles to his eventual designation as a dangerous quack is one of the most fascinating in the annals of American flimflammery, which, as we all know, is quite the competitive annal. Yes, very competitive annals. Yes. I feel that it's interesting that it's not even that it resurges. I actually kind of think it just doesn't go away and that it just kind of formats into whatever the next format is. It just turns into the next sales mechanism. So now it's on TikTok. Well, it's gone through waves, and it's gone up and down. Back in the day, in John Brinkley's day, you had medicines. We're going to get into medicine shows quite a bit, radio programs and all that. But there were laws passed to prevent people from doing this shit. But then when the internet came, we're right back. It's like it's 1890 all over again. You guys ever get got on anything? Yeah. Yeah, me too. Right now, I think I'm incorrect, but now I'm like, if the placebos exist, if they work for me, I'm still doing them. Sure. It's one of those things. It's like oil of oregano. I'm convinced, because I take oil of oregano, I don't get sick. But then Henry says he gets belly aches You know and the thing is oil of oregano really helps Carolina with her stomach issues Yeah but it hurts my belly It makes my belly angry Because you different Yes. And before we get into Brinkley's story, let's cite our sources. We've got The Bizarre Careers of John R. Brinkley by R. Alton Lee and Charlatan by Pope Brock. If you want something focused on Brinkley, go with Lee's book. But if you want more delicious context about medical fraud in this era, go for Pope Brock's book, Charlatan. Man, imagine having the balls to name your son Pope. Fuck yeah. That's fine. You know who that is? That's the fucking Pope. That's my kid, the Pope. Dude, Chicago Pope's on the ropes. Oh yeah. That's gonna be my first get of the fucking Deadpool. Oh my god, yeah, that's right. He's sick. He's got cancer. He's got cancer. We did it! Alright, Deadpool, Pope, coming up. Yeah, fuckers! But speaking of context, we thought it would be informative before we dive into Brinkley's life to go over a brief history of impotence treatments throughout the ages. Thank God. Just so y'all can see how medicine got to the point where people were saying, sure, throw a fucking goat testicle in there and let's see what happens. Now most often, impotence is just another way that men's bodies break down and betray us as we grow older. Fuck you, God! Yeah, fuck you Marcus to be saying it out loud. Yeah, no, I say it now. It's real Yeah, it kind of feels like all of this what you even just talking about this feels like the boogeyman Fucking Bloody Mary around man That's actually the thing that that's how scary this stuff is cuz now I was writing this today like it suddenly hit me It's like I haven't had an erection today. Yeah, is there is there something wrong with me? I'm never gonna have one again No, get one right now. I did one right before I get older by the hour Well, testosterone starts to decline in men around the age of 30, but only by a couple of percentage points. After the age of 50, that drop can increase by 5 to 10 percent per decade. Fuck you. Resulting in impotence and that weird phenomenon that I'm desperately trying to fight in which every haircut you get somehow makes you look like a middle-aged lesbian. It's very specifically you. Right now, I'm in a Danny DeVito phase. Ed, his hair is great. Yeah. It's not good. It looks better than it is. Yeah. better than it is. Yeah. I'm channeling my inner Marino. Oh, sure, sure, sure. I get it, I get it. Now, decreased testosterone means a decreased sex drive, but for the longest time, the best treatment people could come up with to reintroduce a little tingle in your pants were herbal remedies, ground-up animal parts, like, you know, rhino horns and such, and foods like caviar, eggs, celery, asparagus, and, of course, oysters. Oh, yeah. Whip them up into a big ol' pot. Get hard as hell, dude. Are you telling me that those don't work? No, they, well, they are okay. They're fine. All right. But ambergris, that elusive substance found in the digestive tract of whales, that was also used as an aphrodisiac for a time. The ancient Greeks believed that one's virility could return after drinking onion juice for three days straight. All of these cures just sound like, it's just fart medicine. Yes, but I do get horny for whales, so I see where they were thinking. My thing is that I just feel like at that point, they're like, as long as he's drinking onion juice, no one's going to fucking touch him anyway. So what's the point of him even if he can get hard? It doesn't matter. Other than the whale, I kind of believe in the other stuff. Yeah, I think oysters are good for the libido. Well, they're considered a, it's like a sexy. Well, what is it? It's got, it's an aphrodisiac. It's an aphrodisiac. Yeah, anything you do that with when you eat is fucking sexy. Because nothing makes the ladies just fucking, they love watching us eat oysters, Eddie. Ladies just can't wait to watch you and me just suck up a bunch of oysters like we're fucking Nelson Rockefeller after he's half paralyzed from a stroke. If they don't like it, they can leave. Eddie, then, we're alone eating oysters. Sounds great. It does. Actually, you're right. Well, the thing is about that stuff is that, you know, those are like little kicks, you know, like you eat an oyster and you might get a little more horny than you were before. But if you're like impotent, impotent, it's not going to do a hell of a whole lot. No, you'd have to eat the whole ocean. Yeah, that's the thing. The incredibly important thing to know about impotence, especially when it comes to the treatments created by Dr. John Brinkley, is that an inability to get an erection is often a psychological phenomenon. A man has a difficult time once, he gets in his head about it, and every time he can't perform, the guy retreats deeper into the neuroses. I not crazy you crazy You fucking your vagina evil You got a witch in your vagina Why is your vagina always yelling at me Your vagina at fault Your vagina making me doubt. It's not yelling, it's coughing. But the unintended consequence here is that out of all the medical maladies that have a treatment, impotence is one of, if not the most common, to be cured by placebo. Whether there's actual science behind a treatment or not, the supposed cure for impotence might give a man confidence so he thinks he's cured by, say, snorting powdered rhino horn. So since he can once again get hard, he is, in effect, cured. But before the days of Viagra, which produces an erection no matter what... Sometimes. Sometimes some people can't. Really? It doesn't work. I don't know. I don't know. I've heard that it cannot. I honestly, I've never done Viagra. Yeah, I haven't either. I've done half of Viagra. I have no problems. I can say that the one time I did it, it worked. When I was in college and getting blackout drunk all the time and still wanted to have sex, I remember eating one of those gas station boner pills. Oh, horny goat weed. I thought I was going to die. It's really bad for you. Yeah, I felt like I was on too much cocaine. It was a really fucked up thing, and I was just praying for it to end. So don't do those. But before the days of Viagra, impotence was desperate, serious business for a lot of older men. And older men, of course, have far more money to spend than their younger counterparts. That means there's a lot of money in boners. As such, after humanity began to take its first steps into the era of modern Western medicine in the 18th century, a doctor with a lot of imagination could make a fortune if just one of his patients was able to get a boner using the doctor's newfangled methods. See, apparently news used to spread amongst the impotent. And when a man solved his boner problems with a flim-flam treatment, he'd tell other men. From what it seems like, dudes loved talking about how much sex they were having after their boner problems were solved. Of course! The more men talked about the success they had in a treatment, the more the psychosomatic effect worked amongst the other men who got the same treatment. Which made the doctor's treatments more plausible, no matter how detached from provable science the treatments were. This was how John Brinkley made millions on a procedure that had absolutely no basis in any reputable scientific theory Men believed that a goat gland could cure their impotence So if the basis of the man problems was psychological then the cure came not from the goat gland but from the belief inspired by the procedure That's beautiful. Yeah. The human brain's a hell of a thing. It really is. So he would put the goat testicles in the human scrotum. Yes. And it worked. And they would still be able to get hard? Yes. Did he remove the other testicles? No. Oh, it's just kind of like tossed it in the bag. Yeah. That's where I was so confused the whole time. Yeah, he just tossed it in the bag. Yeah, well, he eventually developed other methods that we'll get into later, but, you know, nuts to butts, it's just thrown it in the bag. Is this where the phrase horny goat weed comes from? I don't know, actually. I did have that question myself, but then I forgot before I could Google. I'll Google sometime for you. Actually, Henry's doing it. I'm doing it right now. Thank you, buddy. I appreciate you. Look at this teamwork. What did we do? Oh, it's from China. Okay. Good. It's a flowering plant from China. Well, the thing is, I do know that goats have always just been known as very virile creatures. They got fucking horns. Yeah. Well, it's partly why Pan, the old Greek god of virility and all that. He fucked the shit out of you. Yeah. He's a goat. Yeah. Yeah. And partly why he's involved in some devil stuff, because the goat is just known as a a sexual creature. Yeah, and we know Satan fucks. Yeah, Satan fucks. Satan's hanging out with goats and dogs. And dogs. God fucks too, though. I don't know if he does. I think God just jerks off on all of us. Yeah, I think actually, God doesn't fuck. God actually had an angel fuck for him. God uses IVF. Yeah, God's a cuck. He used the bull. Well, Dr. John Brinkley was just one of the most successful of the charlatans who were throwing anything against the wall to see what stuck in the pursuit of curing the curse that was impotence. Oftentimes, though, and Brinkley cashed in on this too, impotence treatments back then were often paired with infertility treatments. One of the earliest to pair these two maladies in the modern era of Western medicine was a London doctor. I love this guy. He called himself John Graham O.W.L. The O.W.L. stood for Oh Wonderful Love. That's just... Called himself Dr. Owl. Dr. Owl O. Wonderful love. Who are you going to call? Dr. Owl. Ooh. Owl. When he made a fortune on infertility treatments that revolved around his own patented electric coiled celestial bed All this sounds like a Funkadelic song Yeah Dr. Owl's celestial bed. Yeah. People would pay Dr. Owl 50 pounds a solo session and 100 pounds a couple for the privilege of sleeping in his science bed bathed in colored lights, all while Dr. Owl lit incense and had musicians play soft music. And this is like the 1890s. This man's 70 years ahead of his time. So Dr. Owl has an electric bed with lights and incense, hires musicians for people to pay and come and jerk off in front of him? Yeah. Well, they sleep. They sleep. They sleep and then they gain it back. Oh, I thought he had the music on to get people horny and in the mood. No, he jerks off. And then they would bang in front of him. No, he jerks off at them while they sleep. The idea is they're asleep, the lights are on, he's now relaxed, and then he therapeutically, in a Reiki kind of way, jerked off over him. Man, you know couples were fucking in front of Dr. Owl. Every once in a while I would imagine it happened. But he's also a proper London doctor, but on the other hand, the British are also secretly filthy. You've got to tell me, if you told me you were going to go see Dr. Owl, I would say, uh, who? I did that already. Did you? Passed right off. Passed right off. Couldn't care less. I liked it when I said it. Yeah, yeah. Now, while Dr. Owl was ostensibly trying to help others, another doctor who focused solely on impotence got into the game because he himself had lost his vim and vigor. Vim and vigor, by the way, when used together, those were actually code words for the ability to get hard and stay hard. Oh, so vim's getting hard. Yeah, vim's getting hard, vigor's staying hard. Okay, that's good to know. Thank you. Now, the doctor who lost his vim and vigor was a Frenchman in his 70s named Charles Brown Seekward, who in 1889 became irritable and impotent after suffering from gastrointestinal troubles and urinary disturbances. Dr. Charlie Brown Seekward threw himself into finding a cure, and after a year in seclusion, he re-emerged with a concoction that he claimed could conquer father time himself. Dr. Charlie Brown Seekward said that he had discovered an emulsion of dog and guinea pig testicles that he had actually injected into his own bloodstream, and he claimed that this mixture had healed and sexually rejuvenated his downstairs plumbing, as a man in his 70s. into his own bloodstream, and he claimed that this mixture had healed and sexually rejuvenated into his own bloodstream, and he claimed that this mixture had healed and sexually rejuvenated his downstairs plumbing, as a man in his 70s. I think he just got hard understanding that he now knew what lie to say. He's like, aha! And then went, eeeep! Aha! He's looking at a little guinea pig's balls. Yeah, he liked it. What do you call a guy who can't keep his erection after his conscience gets upset about what he's hard about? He's got vigor mortis. No. Vimini cricket. That I don't fully understand. He's got the vim. But then his conscience doesn't let him keep it. He's vimini cricket. He's not vigorous. Interesting. Wow. I liked it. Thank you. He's deeply plugged into Pinocchio because he has a whole bid on Pinocchio. Shh. Available on the road. See you at St. Louis. I just watched Pinocchio again recently. It was wonderful. Phenomenal film. Yeah. Now, I'm no medical historian, but from what I can tell from my reading, doctors and scientists in the 1800s were just starting to discover and or accept some extremely important shit that most of us now take for granted. During this time period, for example, germ theory was only beginning to win out against miasma theory. Miasma theory was the belief held since the days of the Black Plague that sickness was caused by so-called bad air. In other words, the average person had a hard time knowing what to believe or what was going to work throughout this century. So when Dr. Charlie Brown Seekward said that he was cured by a shot made from liquefied animal testicles, a lot of people said, sure, why the fuck not? And thousands of men lined up to get injected. In fact, he was so successful that other Parisian doctors worked together to come up with their own competing miracle injection cure for impotence. Pretty soon, men could choose between Dr. Brown's secret original formula and a new concoction called spermine, which was a mixture of calf's heart, calf's liver, bull testicles, a proprietary blend of anatomical specimens, and a dollop of good old-fashioned human cum obtained from an unknown source. I tell you the source It comes from Charlie Brown Charlie Brown He a clown The garlic brown It what on the side of the bottle of the Stubbs barbecue sauce Oh yeah But while spermine was popular it never overtook Dr Brown Seacord simpler combination of liquefied dog and guinea pig testicles So much simpler. So much simpler. But the fact that men had a preference and one concoction sold better than the other, it tells you that these supposed cures were resulting in many a French boner one way or another. I think when it comes to placebo though Do you think it's like You're You get like one boner Like immediately after the treatment You're like I'm done Do you think that then your boners are cured I think a lot of it is You get in your head about it You get your confidence back You get one good boner One good fuck And then you're like okay I'm back That's why every time I ejaculate I ring a bell three times in my house To dispel all the Chinese demons That's great And, you know, the listeners love hearing three men in their 40s talk about their erections and their ejaculations. That's what the series is about. They really love it. That's what the series is about. I think a lot of times it doesn't work and they just claim it does and keep buying it because they don't want to admit it. They still don't have a boner. Well, that's the problem. Once you go to buy the boner injection, everybody knows you don't get boners anymore. But the thing is that they don't tell anybody that they get the boner injection until after the boner injection works. And the only reason why they get popular is because these men are telling other men, like, hey, why are you in such a good mood? It's like, well, I've been able to have sex again. How? Oh, guinea pigs. I took the miracle cure and the next thing you know, I am having sex with a toilet bowl. It is my favorite aroma. So now that we've given a couple of examples of how people in Dr. Brinkley's era were trying all sorts of wacky shit to cure impotence, impotence, let's get into the story of John Brinkley himself, which will take us through the difficult birth of modern American medicine, old Hollywood, and eventually the Nazi party. Yay! Interesting. So John Brinkley's father was a so-called mountain doctor in the North Carolina region of Appalachia. Mountain doctors were self-taught folk healers who traveled wherever they were needed to treat ailments with various herbal remedies. But interestingly, mountain doctors also worked as counselors or even therapists. Interesting. Mountain doctors help people through spiritual and emotional crises. They guided patients through grief stress and loss while treating their physical ailments with various teas and tinctures So a mountain doctor was required to be good with people And John Brinkley father passed these skills on to his son His son, of course, would use those skills for evil. Now, John Brinkley's father had fought for the Confederacy as a medic in the Civil War when he was in his mid-30s. But Brinkley's father was one of those guys who had a long trail of dead wives, which is not a great look for a doctor. You can't save your wife. Yeah. The woman who raised John Brinkley was actually his father's fifth wife, whom he married at the age of 42. All four of the wives who preceded wife number five had died. And three of those wives died from tuberculosis and or pneumonia. He said thin lungs. Yeah. You know, dying was way more popular back then. And it's easier to do. It was a long time. Now women always live longer than the men. You know what I mean? But then, I don't think it was, I think it was more even. Yeah, there was, you know, no soap. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, they just get ripped open at childbirth, and they just kind of, like, would use, like, envelope glue to kind of just put them back together, kind of, and say, all right, get the fuck out of here. No, I mean, seriously, like, the guy who tried to tell doctors, like, hey, maybe after you work on an autopsy, you should wash your hands before you go and deliver a baby. They hunted that man until he was in an insane asylum. Yeah. And it's jerks. Because he's a bitch. He's a fucking bitch that makes me want to take time out of my fucking day. Ten minutes. I can't believe the 20 seconds it takes for me to wash my hands fully. With your fucking weird sciences, you bitch doctor. You fucking liars. John Brinkley was raised in an unconventional environment, at least unconventional according to the standards of the late 19th century. After the Civil War, John's father came home and married a woman named Sarah Mingus. Sarah Mingus had a 24-year-old niece named Sarah Burnett. Sarah Burnett came to live with John's father and Sarah. John's father and the two Sarahs entered into a throuple. Oh, yeah, I could smell that coming, my friend. Oh, good old-fashioned Appalachian throuple. Oh, I love an Appalachian polycule. Nothing better than eating squirrel and arguing about who gets the car. I don't know if they have marriage there. I think it's just whoever's around type of deal. Weirdly, the wife was actually the one who changed her name to avoid confusion because you know it was two Sarahs Wife opted to go by Sally Because she had to Sally forth Indeed And so on July 8th 1885 the unmarried niece gave birth to our flim flam man John Romulus Brinkley Cool. John actually changed his middle name at some point to Richard because he thought that Romulus was a heathen name. You fucking pussy. Yeah, right. Romulus was awesome. Great name. He should be lucky. Romulus is the founder of Rome. Yeah. Um, but heathen. But as the pattern in John's father's life went, John's mother, Sarah, came down with tuberculosis when John was three. And while I know tuberculosis used to be extremely rampant, it is weird that this guy had three wives and a baby mama die of the same fucking disease. Sounds like he's just in love with many Lenores. You know what I mean? Like, he has like a type. Like, he loves an anemic goth brunette that dies at the slightest cough. They always say that tuberculosis was the beautiful person's disease because you did become more attractive after you got tuberculosis. The blush of death. But regardless of this man's luck, when John Brinkley's mother died, he was thereafter raised by his father, whom he knew as his uncle, and his aunt, who stuck with the name Sally, even though the other Sarah was now dead. You know, you said it. It's all there. That still don't make sense. I know I tried as hard as I could to make it make sense You did good I mean, it's a fact But it's still like, who's, what happened? Why you Sally? She just wanted to be Sally Sally was her fuck name You know how you get a fuck name? Yeah, like my fuck name actually is Romulus John was raised to be religious by his father While his father absolutely terrified him There was a darkness and an anger in John Brinkley that showed itself at a young age, and it often combined with fear to manifest itself in very strange ways. For example, John had a thing for birds, and when he was a young boy in Appalachia, he was admiring a pigeon one day while his father was saying prayers. A cat, however, suddenly appeared, and while John wanted to warn the pigeon, he was too afraid of his father to interrupt prayers. So the cat got the meal, and apparently the prayers were not interrupted by a cat viciously murdering this pigeon. But later, in retaliation, John killed the cat for killing the pigeon. This would turn into somewhat of a pattern, because it would not be the last time that John would killing the pigeon. But later, in retaliation, John killed the cat for killing the pigeon. This would turn into somewhat of a pattern, because it would not be the last time that John would kill a cat for killing a bird. It doesn't understand. It doesn't learn the lesson. Other cats aren't going to learn the lesson. It's just naturally a part of a cat and bird's relationship. They're going to kill birds. It's definitely flawed ideas. Cats are going to kill birds. Cats are going to kill mice. They're an apex predator. They're a 15-pound apex predator. For sure. Are we saying that he never ate chicken? Yeah. Exactly. He's a bitch. Yeah. Oh, very much so. How hypocrite. The worst thing you can be. Amen. Fly from your grave. Now, it was obvious from a young age that John Brinkley was a smart boy. He had a photographic memory, and he was a natural at mechanics and mathematics. From the very beginning, John Brinkley's ambition was to be a mountain doctor like his father. But before John could learn much, his father, at the age of 67, fell ill from chest pains and difficulty urinating. As they say, doctors make the worst patients. So when John's father was told that a neighbor 26 miles away needed his help, and this isn't like 26 miles on the prairie, this is 26 miles in the mountains, he got on his horse and rode out despite his sickness. Oh, so martyrs have always been a thing. Yep. John's father made it to the patient's house and he treated them. But whatever ailment he had killed him that very night as he sat in front of his host's fireplace after supper. So do you think we still owe the copay? Do we have to pay him anything? Because I think that he's fucking dead. I don't think it's done. You feel good, right? The neighbor had to bring the body back home to John and Sally the next day. And of course, devastated the 10-year-old John Brinkley. There's your dad. You're listening to Little John. I understand it's a shock your father died. Double shock. He completely emptied his bowels in the process. Here's his corpse. Here's his corpse. We couldn't find his wallet. We all feel great. Unfortunately, he did soil himself on our rug, and we will need to buy a new one, so I will be seeking recompense for the rug. I will be getting vengeance for that, and if you don't give me money for that, we will experience a generational family war. Yes. In order to get my money I want you to let you know until I get my money we keeping his fingers You funny You funny My dad must have lied to you Well this is John origin story Both his mother and father had died from illnesses before he reached puberty, so he vowed that he would become a doctor as soon as possible to prevent more people from dying premature deaths. Like Batman. Yeah. But the problem is that while John's father had tried to teach him to be honest and honorable, the patriarch had died far too soon for those lessons to fully sink in. That's why Alfred Pennyworth was so crucial. That's why he was essential. Additionally, since John grew up Appalachia poor due to his father's premature death, and as we all know, Appalachia poor is the poorest in the entire nation, he added another dream that often battled and won against his more altruistic goals. John Brinkley wanted more than anything to be rich. Awesome. And he proved himself willing to do absolutely anything, no matter how immoral or reckless, in service of that goal. And I will become the enemy of that which is the worst enemy to all mankind. Lack of erection. And that is why I will be Goatball Man. Goatball Man. I lost my parents. I have no money. This is called the Appalachian Superhero Pipeline. I'm Goat Ball Man Goat Gland Man Goat Gland Man Goatsy Man Yeah Goat Oh Goatsy Man Goatsy Man I opened up my portal And I led all of my I suck in all the bad guys Like what's his name From um It was a little pink guy From Mario Brothers Oh Kirby Kirby Yeah he's sucking people up his butthole Yeah Good Goatsy app Great Goatsy app Oh that's amazing Yeah someone sent it in They were very nice So now I got this on my head. Go look it up. Go look it up, everybody. I know what it is. I know, but let the audience do it. This is going to be a great hat to wear around. Honestly, I heard that the Goatsy guy, he just got picked up by Netflix, too. Oh, fuck. Oh, wow. They're really getting the engine. No, really. Honestly, that's a good sign for us. Yeah. Yeah. Well, once the jar guy comes in, we're really going to be fucked. That's a whole thing. Now, John Brinkley was a born hustler. So he left home in 1901 at the age of 16 to take a job assisting in mail delivery. But he spent every free moment reading books on medicine and absorbing every word Brinkley however was also an Appalachian hillbilly who had very few limits when it came to indulgence In a telling story from his youth Brinkley was in Asheville, North Carolina, love you, Asheville, when he saw a banana for the first time in his life. Me too. Crazy, dude. You honestly, I kind of just wrapped your head around that. You've never seen a banana. Yeah. And you finally see a banana. You're on mushrooms because you're in Asheville. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Is that a fucking banana, man? What is that fucking... Is that some kind of banana? He's never seen a... Is that a yellow fruit? I've never seen a yellow fruit. He'd never seen a banana. He'd never heard of a banana. So he bought a banana, and he liked it. It's very good. Because he liked it, he bought another banana, and then bought another, and another, and he bought as many bananas as he could afford. He spent all of his money on fucking bananas. It's big money. That's fucking rare-ass fruit. But on the first day that he discovered bananas, Brinkley said that he ate so many that his love turned into hate. Relatable. And he supposedly never ate another banana for as long as he lived. Say banana one more time. Say banana. Banana. Banana. I love the fact, I love this. I actually have never related to a person more. But this was a telltale sign that John Brinkley had all the makings of an addict. And once he got a taste for something, he took that desire as far as he possibly could. Yeah, but he didn't get fully addicted to bananas and turn yellow. That's the bottom story here. He needed to fucking go all the way into bananas. Banana. In time, Brinkley... I'm a banana-holic. Yeah, I was. You ever suck dick for bananas? You could just suck the banana. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Well, in time, Brinkley, of course, became an alcoholic. And he was what you would call a bad drunk. I was trying to drink bananas. I'm a banana-holic, but for alcohol. You know, some people are super banana-holics. Yeah, I used to be one too. Yeah, I gave it up. Now I just drink whiskey. Far healthier, far better for me. But John Brinkley was made both emotionally unstable and he would become extremely aggravated when he would drink. And he would drink a lot. I prefer when you are addicted to bananas. That was nice, so we just had breakfast and pancakes. We never cramped up. Not once Once John Brinkley destroyed a man car with an axe while drinking Oh yeah With an axe Yeah fuck yeah And when he became a doctor he was known to sometimes drunkenly chase patients out of his hospital with a butcher knife This apparently happened more than a few times. You better be lucky this ain't a banana. Yeah, you're not going to let me put your co-testicles in your testicles. I'll put your testicles in my boat. Where's my knife? One time, a medical colleague showed up mysteriously missing a fucking ear, and it was rumored that Brinkley had either bit or cut that man's ear off during a drunken argument. How was I supposed to know he didn't have a peel? That same colleague later had to use a wooden board to take John down after John got drunk and started waving around a gun. That behavior, however, was still many years away, and John Brinkley had a long way to go before his fame could allow him such indulgences in behavior. When I was in high school, my geometry teacher, he went missing for three weeks, and then he came back. He was an asshole. No one liked him. And then when he came back, he was missing an ear. That's incredible. And then, like, tried to, like, not bring it up. And then it was, like, three minutes in the class, and then someone's like, what happened to your ear? Your ear is gone. You used to be a two-eared person. Now you're a one-eared person. And I had not heard with my two ears the one-ear story. How do you lose an ear? I don't give a shit about how obtuse this triangle is. You're missing an ear now. I want to know where the ear went and why you can't wear glasses anymore. I assume it was a gambling thing. Yeah, I would imagine so. You could have had ear cancer. He also could have gone on a bender and had no idea how that ear was gone. You know, he was too straight-laced for that. I feel like he was just a gambling loser. But sometimes you find out that, like, somebody goes, like, they're super lame, and they just try, like, meth once, and then all of a sudden they're doing stuff like this. I was following this case where this guy, he was like, I just sort of randomly do meth, and when I do meth, sometimes, like, I'll do this thing where I go on to Grindr or to Craigslist, and I put my address on there and I dress up like a little girl and I blindfold myself and I leave the door open and I tell guys to come in and rape me and he'll tell them to all line up and just fucking have their time with me and it was like, but it's really just when I'm smoking meth little girl and blindfold myself and I leave the door open and I tell guys to come in and little girl and blindfold myself and I leave the door open and I tell guys to come in and rape me. He'll tell them to all line up and just fucking have their time with me. And it was like, but it's really just when I'm smoking meth. That's the way he put it. He's like, that's just a meth thing I do. But if I'm not on meth, I'm not like that. It's just when I'm smoking meth. Then I kind of do this thing. And then when they're not showing up or it was fast, I want them to show up. I lewdly dance in front of the windows. This is all completely from a police interrogation where he lewdly dances until a man eventually will come in. But then he has to blindfold himself and say, you pretend like you're breaking in and then I want you to take me. But then they smoke meth. You know, I actually read earlier today. You remember that old that old they used to say the ecstasy ecstasy would cause hole like make holes in your brain. That was from an actual study. But what the study actually made a mistake on is that they accidentally gave all the patients meth. instead of MDMA, instead of ecstasy. So ecstasy doesn't make holes in your brain, but meth does. Oh, I bet it does. And sometimes one of those holes makes you dress up like a little girl and get fucked by a bunch of random men you find on Craigslist. That's right. Now, John Brinkley's Aunt Sally died on Christmas Day, 1906. But when John Brinkley returned for the funeral, he reunited with the daughter of a prominent businessman who had delighted in torturing John when they were both teenagers. Amazingly, this was yet another Sally. Sally Wyke. Just two names back then. Yeah, right. Sally and Sarah. That's it. The two of them were married. Yeah, it's like Olivia and Sophia today. Yes. Like back then, it was Sally and Sarah. Like Isabella's. Yeah. Well, the two of them were married a year later when Sally was 22 and John Brinkley was 21. But the marriage was an absolutely horrendous match that would cause John a lot of headaches throughout his 20s. But once Brinkley was married, he decided to finally try his hand at being a doctor, using a traveling Quaker medicine man as his mentor, as opposed to, say, going to medical school to actually train as a physician. Remember, though, that John Brinkley was a hustler, and Quaker doctors were some of the most successful hustlers of their day. See, in the late 19th century, Quaker doctors were basically traveling salesmen who put on actual song and dance routines, pretty much vaudeville, that were really just pitches for selling the doctor own medicine tonic or elixir This is where the term medicine show comes from These were the medicine shows of old And these shows were where John Brinkley cut his teeth as a medical professional. I mean, it would have been nice if my doctor sang to me when they told me I had diabetes. Hey, fatty. Hey, my little fatty. Are you ready for the curse of the rest of your life? Are you ready for your sweet pea? Let me tell you that you got the diabetes. Your foot. Your foot. Your foot is on fire. It might come off too soon. It might come off one day. Just don't have too many sodas. No more ice cream. No more fun. You have to eat like no one can. It's better. Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. Now, when one attended a Quaker medicine show, the performance would usually open with a fiddler and or dancer who warmed up the crowd and got their attention. This is what healthcare should provide now. Yeah. If we're paying all this fucking money. Give me a show. Yeah. Well, once the crowd was captured, they would be subjected to a short morality play in which a family patriarch would die tragically and pathetically, leaving behind a grieving family. Oh, no, my penis! Poor dad died of not getting any. Well, the death was only tragic and pathetic, of course, because the patriarch could have easily avoided death if he had only bought and drank whatever miracle tonic that the physician was selling. In fact, the entire play's purpose was an advertisement, which would culminate in the actors calling out the product by name. Oh, if only father had taken Hamlin's wizard oil when he had the chance we could have avoided this terrible fate. Hamlin's wizard oil, by the way, was a real tonic. The Quaker physician would then appear on stage to sing a song about his restorative cure. Then he would give a hard sell on his product. You had Burdock Blood Bitters, Aunt Fanny's Worm Candy, Dr. Thomas's Eclectric Oil, God Bold's Vegetable Balsam, and a thousand others that sounds like fucking mediocre rock bands from the 70s. Aunt Fanny's Worm Candy, man. It just sounds like a dead body. Yeah, Aunt Fanny's Worm Candy. Oh, man, that's a good one, dude. No, my personal favorite is Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pink People, which despite having the silliest name it was actually one of the few that actually worked They were big pink pills that were just full of iron which meant they actually treated anemia So anemias were called pink people People with anemia X? Yeah. Pink pills. Pink people. Oh, fun. Yeah. Is that what you got? No. No. Interesting. I'm clean. I'm completely healthy. But you're also pink. I am. Now, you might think that these Quaker doctors are the origin of the term quack to denote a fraudulent doctor, but that is not the case. The term quack had actually been around for a couple hundred years by the time the Quaker medicine shows became popular. Quack had long been used to describe the exact same type of loud and obnoxious medical salesman that these Quaker doctors ended up being. Men whose speeches were just as annoying and meaningless as the quacking of a duck. So it's really just a coincidence of language. Yeah, and in West Virginia, in the Appalachians, there's lots of quackers there. A bunch of quacker-ass quackers. A bunch of quackers. Fucking quackers. Full of quackers. Fucking quackers. But while other countries certainly had their fair share of quacks and frauds, there was no country on earth in which quacks and medicine shows were more successful, nor was there a country where they were more prevalent than these United States of America. In other words, we have been like this from the very fucking start. Yeah. We just like shows. Hey, Americans are dreamers. Yeah. We like to believe in miracles. It has nothing to do with the show. The show's a good part of it, yes, but really what it's about is that we are extremely impatient people. Can we get to the end of this? But it makes us susceptible to fraud. Americans throughout history have also not been known as a people who place our trust in someone who has the best nor the smartest solutions. Rather, Americans tend to gravitate towards people who have the answer that they want to hear. And the Quaker doctors that John Brinkley learned from were experts at giving the public easy solutions that reinforced their pre-existing beliefs. There's also, I feel like it's what you were saying. It's tied into the miracle thing. It's tied into this idea of like almost like we made America happen. We made all of these things happen. We are out here. We're solving the West. We're doing all these things like we could do anything. Yeah. Anything's possible. Yes. It's still like this. You're right. because like now I take 20 vitamins but going to the gym are you sure exercise and just eating right is the way to do it I think I can just take a bunch of pills and it be fine I think that really all I need to do. Well, back when Brinkley was just getting started in the first decade of the 20th century, a lot of Americans, and particularly rural Americans, they saw hospitals as nothing more than a place you went to die. They're not? Yeah, no. Hospitals are gussied up funeral homes, they'd say. Honestly, it's not that far off from the current view as well, even though now it's also because it will hollow you out financially. Well, by the same token, trained doctors were seen by many Americans as crooks who were making and keeping you sick on purpose just so you would keep paying the money to treat you indefinitely. I've heard that many times already in modern times. I've heard it. Of course. Well, I mean, I can see that point being made about, say, like maybe the pharmaceutical industry. And therapists. I would say the vast. Auto mechanics. Yeah. Well, auto mechanics. That's one thing. So doctors, you can call doctors blood monkeys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Play with my balls, blood monkey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Play with my balls. See if I got to hurt any of my balls, you fucking blood monkey. Can we do it? Blood monkey, take a look at my asshole at 45. Look at it, blood monkey, you fucking, you fucking reflecting disc fucking idiot. Look at my fucking asshole. That's your job. the vast vast vast vast majority of doctors therapists mental health professionals they got into that to help people they want to make you better they want like it's a pharmaceutical companies that's something different altogether evil yeah that's true evil but doctors you can usually trust a doctor but as author pope brock put it quacks like the one john brinkley mentored under were not just accepted they were joyously embraced by the american public who wanted quick and easy solutions to their problems. And since these quacks were mobile, they honed their craft in one city and moved to the next quite quickly. Because while sometimes the products they sold just didn't work, they could sometimes be outright fucking deadly. No, especially if they involved mercury or any of the things that are like, you know, you shouldn't probably be ingesting. And then quite a bit of them involved mercury, lead, arsenic, a lot of shit. And by the time you're ready, once like, you know, you could last for about a week before people started really showing up with kind of like long form issues from it. Yeah. And then you can bust out of town. Kidney failure happened a lot. Oh yeah. you could last for about a week before people started really showing up with kind of like long form issues from it. you could last for about a week before people started really showing up with kind of like long form issues from it. Yeah. And then you can bust out of town. Kidney failure happened a lot. Oh, yeah. But that takes a bit. Now, to understand how John Brinkley was able to eventually convince people that implanting goat testicles into their bodies could cure impotence, we have to talk for a bit about just how haphazard and dangerous Western medicine was in those days, especially in America. And a lot of it revolves around the substances that were sold at these medicine shows. And they were also sold, by the way, at pharmacies in every town and city in America. Products like Hamlin's Wizard Oil were known as patent medicines, which were marketed with a variety of designations. Elixirs, tonics, tinctures, nostrums. And most advertised themselves as cures for a large range of medical maladies. An elixir wouldn't just cure a headache, it would cure a headache. excessive flatulence it would cure you know the shakes the jimmies whatever you had wow but despite the name patented medicines were not patented by using the word patent quack doctors were implying to the consumer that the product had been officially examined and endorsed but the name was actually an explicit lie in itself was the name the thing that was patented not the actual product nothing was patented they just put the word patent in there there were no laws there were no rules there were no regulations about any anybody could do anything wasn't time to be alive according to do you know what was in hamlin's wizard oil this is amazing it was made of 50 to 70 alcohol and had camphor ammonia chloroform sassafras and turpentine in it yeah and you were to drink it you got you fucking rail dude yeah dude oh yeah oh we're we're about to get into the shit that got you railed. I mean, nobody was overseeing the creation and distribution of patent medicines. So there was no telling what was actually in them. You know, a lot of them, like Hamlin's Wizard, had all sorts of horrible shit. But most often, patent medicines would make a person feel better temporarily because these medicines were either half alcohol or laced with morphine, opium, cocaine, cannabis, or sometimes just a dash of everything. Cool. And these weren't just like i said they weren't just sold at medicine shows you could just walk into a pharmacy and buy them so you could just get unicorn spray yeah like that all that is that called unicorn spray yeah people used to be so fucked up back then all the time we had no idea they didn know what drugs they were doing no idea but worst of all these medicines were made by companies or individuals who knew for a fact that putting these drugs into these patent medicines these were deadly concoctions for example pure morphine was sometimes packaged as a way to calm teething babies and it it definitely did one morphine based baby medicine called dr winslow's soothing syrup was on the market until 1930 yeah and this was despite the fact that people were noticing as early as 1911 that your baby could die if you gave them this soothing syrup yeah but at least it's quiet yeah it's nice and relaxed it's very it's super very soothed when babies die they tend to get very quiet super quiet i don't even know they're there and the thing is that when they get really cold the best part about them is you could wrap a couple bottles of whiskey around their cold bodies to make the bottles cold that's the best part yeah this is the best part no because so many patent medicines were full of incredibly addictive drugs that made you feel good, some patent medicines became extremely popular, and there are quite a few that are still around today. We, however, know them in their modern form as soda pop. In fact, one could argue that the popularity of soda in America can be traced directly to patent medicines. 7-Up, for example, was marketed as a hangover cure, and 7-Up is still great for a hangover, but originally 7-Up helped the hangover because it was full of lithium. Cool! That's awesome! The mood stabilizer made you feel better. Fuck yeah, like Kurt Cobain! Yeah. Famously, Coca-Cola was full of cocaine. It's in the fucking name, but it was also marketed as a remedy for morphine addiction that you would get from taking other patent medicines. That's fascinating, because like, Iron Bruh, your favorite, Iron Bruh. Dude, it's so easy to say. Iron Brew. Iron Brew. Iron Brew. Iron Brew. It's... 40,000 bottles were stolen last week, by the way. From who? Scotland. But they said it's still like a hangover cure. Yeah. Kind of. Dude, well, the thing is they don't have the original Iron Brew formula anymore, so it doesn work quite as well for hangovers Because you said vermouth in it Yeah It like one of those The Iron Brew Energy drink though still tastes like original Iron Brew and that shit will that whap a hangover pretty quickly. Sometimes, I mean, if you puke it all day, you throw a little Coca-Cola in you, you feel all right. Dude, when I was hungover as fuck at New York Comic Con after our show, after our Brooklyn show, I legitimately, that Coke fixed me. Yeah. I had a Coca-Cola in the morning and it fixed me. Oh, no, I usually, that's one of my hangover things is a big, you know, a big can of Coca-Cola. Just fucking drink it down. Thanks, Coca-Cola. Well, but to bring it full circle back to boners, Dr. Pepper's main selling point was that it restored vim, vigor, and vitality. It was a digestive aid as well. As we said earlier, vim, vigor, and vitality were code words that patent medicine makers used to market impotence cures. So the pep in Dr. Pepper is indeed the pep that you might feel in one's pants. So that's why I feel like that when I drink Dr. Pepper. Yeah, that's why you feel kind of horny. Horny as fuck. Unbridled. I fuck so good on Dr. Pepper. I fuck so good on Dr. Pepper. I feel like Madonna's sex book horny. Remember that one? I remember that one. Yeah. Now, just before John Brinkley got into the patent medicine and quack doctor game, the government passed the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which also created the FDA. Fucking wee, wussy fucking pieces of shit. They're very helpful. This required manufacturers to actually list the ingredients on the bottle. So if you had morphine in your patent medicine, you had to say it was morphine. It was 40% alcohol, you had to say it was 40% alcohol. Now, if you use less of it, is it lesphine? Yeah. Coddy's great. Coddy's great. So good. You can pay for it. But the quacks fought back. In 1912, the Supreme Court ruled that just so long as patent medicines put the ingredients on the bottle, companies could claim that their products could do basically anything. Anyone could mix a bunch of useless shit in a bottle and tell the public that it cured cancer. And whether it cured cancer or not, it was legal for the manufacturer to do so. Thank you, Supreme Court. That was the law of the land until 1938, when the FDA mandated that medicines had to prove that they were at the very least not harmful. This rule was put into place after over 100 people died from drinking a curative called elixir sulfonalamide, which was basically industrial solvent with raspberry flavoring that caused kidney failure Oh great But in between the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the new laws of 1938 Dr John Brinkley took medical quackery to new levels and marketed dozens, if not hundreds, of medicines and procedures in addition to his goat gland surgery. At best, Brinkley's methods worked as placebos. At worst, they were deadly, as 42 souls discovered to their eternal misfortune. I do think that people in America, especially at this time period, actually love the concept of a self-taught, self-governing doctor. They love this idea that he taught himself everything, and then he didn't have a governing body tell him what to do. So it's almost like kind of what we're seeing with the current MAGA movement, kind of like a view into, like, that's a self-made man. Yeah. Well, it was far more, well, tellingly, that was far more the idea in rural areas. They liked a doctor who was also a farmer. Just as dumb as them. That's what they wanted. They wanted the doctor to be just as dumb as them so they can be like, I can be one, or just be like, he knows how to talk to me. Well, it's partly that, but it was also, you know, there was something about change. You know, like there's always, usually these rural doctors, these like mountain doctors, they would have two jobs. They'd be a doctor on the side, but they would have these folk remedies that, and a lot of these folk remedies, they do actually work. Like some of them very much work. Oh, yeah, I bet, because some of it, again, it's just like if it's low-level stomach issues or like, you know, there is many natural things that are used that got turned into actual medicines that are very, like, you know, they're a part of it. It's all chemistry. Yeah, folk medicine has been the thing for a long time. There's been good palliatives and stuff that have made it actually worse for forever. It totally works. Just ask James Van Der Beek. Oh, yeah. Steve Jobs. These guys are fucking crushing it out there. I'm talking like for a headache. Yeah, that's what I mean. Or like, you know, my tummy hurts. Otherwise, go to the doctor. But for some reason in rural America around this time, when a guy showed up in town and said, like, I went to school to become a doctor, they didn't like it. They didn't trust it. They still don't. They hate scientists. They really don't. Yeah, they really do. Don't take your vaccines. They're going to make you dumb. They're scared. Yeah. They're scared. They're scared. Also, I think a lot. it. They didn't trust it. They still don't. it. They didn't trust it. They still don't. They hate scientists. They really don't. Yeah, they really do. It's like, don't take your vaccines. They're going to make you dumb. They're scared. Yeah. They're scared. Also, I think a lot of it, to go back to one more time, Lincoln. Self-taught person, became president, changed the fucking country. Sure. But he was like a genius. He was like one of those very special men of history. Yeah. So, now that we have a solid base of knowledge when it comes to how John Brinkley was able to get away with so much shit throughout his career, let's return to John Brinkley's education in flimflammery with his Quaker medicine show mentor in 1907. Amongst other techniques, John learned that quoting from the Bible subconsciously caused the audience to place their trust in the huckster. And since John had a photographic memory and a religious upbringing, he could quote the Bible with the best of them. John also learned to capitalize on the fears that audiences already had towards doctors, claiming that following the advice of a trained physician would only lead to the grave because traditional doctors didn't pay attention to new discoveries. Traditional doctors were a bunch of fucking nerds obsessed with their stupid scientific method which only slowed down progress while you out there in the audience suffered day after day. In other words, the sentiment behind those doctors hate this one little trick pop-up ads, that shit's been going on for well over a century. Let me just put it out there. if a doctor doesn't hate anything that actually works. You know what I mean? A doctor is super excited for you to figure. If you do have something that works, they'll be like, great. Yeah, they love it. They want you to tell them so they can tell other people so they can treat other people. You know, one thing they told me when I got diabetes is to not have apples because they're full of sugar, even though people say an apple a day keeps a doctor away, but it would kill me. This is my thing. If fruit sugar can kill me, I'll just fucking die. If fruit, if it's just fruit that can kill me, what else am I supposed to eat if it's not fruit? Do you know there's sugar in carrots? That's fucking horseshit. It don't taste like it. No, it certainly doesn't. That's fine. You know what I'm saying. You'll be okay. It's just one of those things, you know. Eggs one week I can't have. Milk I can't have. And then the next week, you're all eggs again. Full of eggs. I ate a bunch of egg salad for breakfast. I don't believe you. You don't? No I believe you And so with his father more altruistic mountain medicine traditions playing the angel on John shoulder and the Quaker medicine show Hucksterism playing the devil John Brinkley and his wife moved to Chicago in 1907, where John declared that he was finally going to attend medical school. Wow. Now, medicine was, to say the least, in a transitory period in the late 19th century. While germ theory had won out over miasma theory by 1890, the old ways of traditional folk medicine have been butting up against modern medical breakthroughs in America since the middle of the century. So to try and standardize medical care and treatment in this country, legitimate doctors formed the American Medical Association in 1847 to draw a line between the doctors who actually went to medical school and the traveling patent medicine men who were just calling themselves doctors. The problem, though, was that every state began to enact their own medical regulations. So if a med student couldn't meet the requirements in one state, he could just go to another state where the regulations weren't as tough. John Brinkley definitely took advantage of this state by state. That's smart. To muddy the waters further, there also wasn't a set standard for what a medical school actually was or what it should teach. So by the time John Brinkley started looking around for medical schools, there was a divide in med schools between what came to be known as the regulars and the irregulars. The regulars belonged to the AMA, which used pure science to treat patients. This eventually became modern medicine. It's technically known as allopathy. So the regulars went to the AMA and the irregulars went to UCB. But just because allopathy won That doesn't mean that the irregulars Went away The medical schools who were considered Irregulars are still very much alive The most common of which Is of course the homeopaths What you call me? Homeopaths believe that something that causes Symptoms in a healthy person Can be used to cure a sick person For example a raw onion causes tears In a runny nose in a healthy person so a homeopath might use a raw onion to treat a cold. As they say, like cures like. Leave me fucking alone with these onions. Yeah, I know. I don't want an onion-based cure. Why are you so angry today? Why are you yelling about everything? I'm not at everything. It's the onion-based cure. Every single thing I say, you're yelling about. No, I'm not mad at you. I mad at the time and the onions I love onions I love onions I just want onions for pleasure not for medicine I mentioned the rectal dysfunction once you been hot ever since I the hardest man It's actually probably that's nice only villainously horny all right criminal level all right okay well also included in the irregular category are what are called the eclectics which still include chiropractors and osteopaths they also however include blood letters and purveyors of herbal medicine that make a lot of promises without any real scientific evidence anything that was sold by alex jones in his heyday or is currently hawked by less respectable podcasters than ourselves are a part of the Eclectic Group, although I will fully cop to the fact that we have sold our fair share of supplements on this show. In fact, I would say the podcast has halfway turned into the modern equivalent of a medicine show. It's a bunch of shitheads making a lot of entertaining noise for the sole purpose of selling you a product that you hope might work. This episode, by the way, is brought to you by HIMSS. Hey, thanks for ad money. Thank you for ad money. They're a bell mill. they believe are all every single thing we say about medical stuff they believe yes and they should they really do such a good job on checking people's criminal records before they send them boner pills they should now john brinkley definitely subscribed to homeopathy but he was far more a part of the eclectic school of medicine as you could imagine from his future role as the goat gland man. But whether one chose to go into an allopath, a homeopath, or an eclectic school, it was becoming obvious at the turn of the 20th century that there was a lot of money to be made in healing the sick. So medical schools that gave extensive training in all three varieties of medicine began popping up around the country. But despite the fact that there were far fewer homeopath and eclectic schools than legitimate med schools, the irregular schools produced far more graduates. They were basically diploma mills. But since Americans didn't know any better, men like John Brinkley ran rampant for decades. Oh, so like hymns for diplomas. Now Brinkley got accepted to the Bennett Medical College of Chicago which was an eclectic med school that only required a high school diploma Being a mountain boy Brinkley never even went to high school But after getting the 1908 equivalent of a GED only cost him 25 bucks he enrolled and became engrossed in the world of unconventional medical practices. Specifically, Brinkley became obsessed with an early endocrinologist named Dr. Henry Harrower, who studied glands. I bet he did. Glands are cells or organs that produce or secrete substances that organisms need to make or get rid of to survive. Sweat glands, thyroid glands, pituitary glands, adrenal glands. Fried glands. All very important glands. I just feel like the guy, he's just focused on glands. He loves glands. Well, as important as glands are, Dr. Harrower came to believe that glands were the key to a long and healthy life. And this was really common in those days. Every guy had the one thing. It was a stick. That he's like, if you take care of this, this is the key to a healthy and happy life. But Harrower became convinced that implanting or consuming the glands of animals could have various positive effects on the body. But Brinkley would, in time, take Harrower's gland theories to the next level. Yeah, because right now it's like, yeah, sure, you get iron and food and stuff, I guess, from eating certain glands. but a lot of it's also quite cholesterol ridden. It's quite bad for you. No, no, no, they're not right. Yeah. I mean, you do need glands, and your glands need to be healthy. Your pituitary gland gets all fucked up, and that's really going to play hell with you. Your adrenal glands get fucked up. That's going to be a bad time. The adrenochrome in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is that real? Does that get you fucked up if you take it? Do we know? Adrenochrome is one of those, like, that is one of those internet things. It's not real. I don't know if it's real. I don't think it's real. Apparently it is. So according to Wikipedia, it is created. You can make it. Okay, from like animals' adrenaline glands? I guess it's from ours. Let us know. Please, I'm really curious about this. Sidestorieslpotl at gmail.com. Yeah, I always thought it was a myth. I thought it was, yeah. Well, this conspiracy of where it comes from, the idea that it comes from babies, right? Like children. Obviously it doesn't come from babies and children. No, because again, it wouldn't be enough. It would be way more expensive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's from dogs. You're right. Moving on. Done. Thank you. Right in. Now, Brinkley's medical schooling put a strain on his marriage. I think it's from dogs. I think it's from dogs. You're right. Moving on. Done. Thank you. Right in. Now, Brinkley's medical schooling put a strain on his marriage. His wife resented how much time and money he spent on his education, so she actually left him and started divorce proceedings. Since John Brinkley was somewhat unbalanced, he actually kidnapped their daughter and took her to Canada to avoid alimony payments. Brinkley and his wife eventually reconciled, but she soon left him again to return to North Carolina. He dropped out of med school in his third year to follow her, but he soon left her again for St. Louis. There, he just fucking bought a dubious diploma for $100 from an institution with an equally dubious name. It was called the University of Arts and Sciences. Oh, yeah, that's an old place. Yeah. Frankly, then moved back to North Carolina to give it one last shot with Sally, but she soon gave him an ultimatum. Either quit this damn fool dream of becoming a doctor and take a good job at Western Union, or this marriage is over. It's the first time that has ever happened. A woman begging her husband to not be a doctor. Frankly, of course, chose his dream, and he left Sally for good in 1914. The old St. Louis toodaloo. Normally involves leaving her cut in half in a river. No, that's called a Cleveland goodbye. Ah, yes, yes, yes. Now, other than his marital troubles, we don't know a lot about Brinkley's life in the early 1910s. Brinkley's name appears in states all over the country where he would attend various med schools, then skip town to avoid bill collectors when tuition came due. So he got to take half a semester a lot. You know, you put enough of them together. You think I could take the second half? You don't have to show up halfway through. But what we do know is that in 1912, he worked for a man in Tennessee named Dr. Burke, who specialized in the treatment of gonorrhea and syphilis. It's suspected that it was Dr. Burke who first introduced John Brinkley to the idea that there was a lot of money to be made in sexual wellness. And all the while, glands were dancing in Brinkley's dreams. Like sugar plums. You know, sugar plums and glands. Same. They really look alike. They do. So after learning all he could from Dr Burke John moved to Chicago where he met a salesman named John Crawford who previously done jail time for robbing the Hotel Mayo in Tulsa Oklahoma John Crawford was a guy with a lot of big ideas. Crawford wanted Brinkley to go with him to China, because in China, you don't need a medical degree to practice medicine. Yeah. But instead of that insane idea, the two men opened an office in Greenville, South Carolina, focused on sexual wellness. They began running ads in newspapers, asking this pointed question. Are you a manly man full of vigor? Yeah. No. Come here, sir. Come here, you skinny little boy. Well, if the answer was no, then Brinkley and Crawford offered an injection that was supposed to revitalize your sex drive. It cost $25, which doesn't sound like a lot. But in 19, was it 1912? That had the same buying power today. It was nearly a thousand bucks. Like it's $25 was a lot of fucking money. And this is important because the injections, it was just colored water. It was just water and food coloring. And that's it. And after their scan was discovered within just two months, Brinkley and Crawford were chased out of Greenville where they left behind all of their doctor's supplies, a mountain of debt, and a lot of bad checks. Is it kind of like how modern day extreme ED medication has to be stuck right into your penis? I was going to ask the same thing, actually. It does? Well, extreme, there's like an extreme treatment where they literally like stab you in the penis and they shoot you directly in the penis. I was asking, yeah, do you think they use the penis for these shots? I don't think so. No, I think that'd be a big ask. That is a big ask. That's a lot. You'd have to really show me a track record that this works. Yeah. So after the Greenville debacle, Brinkley and Crawford retreated to Crawford's hometown of Memphis, where Crawford introduced Brinkley to a doctor with the incredible name of Dr. Tiberius Gracchus Jones, who, despite being a white man, has the best blaxploitation name I've ever heard in my life. I am a white man. I don't need your judgment. Me, the man, Dr. Tiberius Gracchus Jones. What was important here is that Dr. Jones had a daughter with an equally incredible name, Minerva Talitha Jones. Minerva however went by the name of Minnie Minnie was just 21 years old But she perfectly matched John Brinkley let say energy and ambitions which is another way of saying that Minnie's morals were just as flexible as John's. Hold on, is it Minerva Mouse? Minerva Mouse? It might be. Minnie Mouse. Minnie Mouse, yeah. Minerva, I did not even know that it was short for it because it's like, my grandmother was Carmella. Okay. Millie. Okay. That's where Millie comes from. That is a very, I do not know that about many. Minerva Mouse. Oh, Minerva. Yeah. And I guess, and Mickey would be Michael Mouse. Michael, hi. Hi, Michael and Minerva Mouse. This is my wife, Minerva. We're mice. Michael. Don't be a problem, don't have a problem with my giant gloves. Michael and Minerva Mouse sound like funeral directors. Hi, hello. Minerva, hi, I'm Mike. Mike Mouse. The sadness takes us all. That's the voice I use for work. This is me. You're talking to Michael. Death isn't the end. It's just what's next. Well, Minerva, Minnie, of course, Minnie and John were soon married, and they used the last of Brinkley's profits from the Greenville scam to go on a five-week honeymoon to those most romantic of American cities, Denver and Kansas City. Fuck yeah. At this point, John was 28 years old and ready to take on the world. But when they returned to Memphis, they found that Brinkley's partner, John Crawford, had been put in jail. Brinkley had no idea why Crawford had been arrested, but when one fraudster goes behind bars, his partner usually sees it as a sign that it's time to skip town. So Brinkley took his new wife, Minnie, to Knoxville. Brinkley's ex-wife Sally, however, had somehow found out about the Greenville scam. And out of just pure fucking spite, she set in motion a chain of events that got Brinkley extradited back to Greenville. Hell yeah, man. I love when a fucking lady gets mad and just fucking does it all, dude. Oh, yeah. Oh, and that's the thing. I actually skipped over quite a bit of like, she was horrible. Like, yeah, she was an absolutely just vindictive, horrible person. Brinkley was horrible as well. That's what you get. He got what he got. But in Greenville Brinkley was charged with practicing medicine without a license because apparently that diploma that he spent on that was worthless Brinkley however subscribed to the principle that there was no honor among thieves He ratted out his old partner John Crawford to get himself a better deal, and using his father-in-law's connections, Brinkley managed to get out of jail with a $200 fine. Amazingly, though, once Crawford paid off both of their debts to the tune of $400, he and Brinkley left town together and agreed to part ways as friends after Brinkley agreed to cover a portion of the $400 that Crawford was forced to pay back. That never happens. No, but he's good. I mean, it sounds like he's a real con man. Yeah, very much so. Yeah, a real con man like, yeah, sorry, I'm fucked you over, but man. We could work together again someday. It's business. Yeah, it was just a portion too. It could be 10 bucks. It was enough for them to shake hands and say, see you later. Now, this was the early 20th century. So a man in America could very easily leave his past behind if he simply moved. And he often didn't even have to go that far. After setting up in South Carolina, Brinkley moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he opened a medical practice in October of 1914. By May of the next year, Brinkley had decided that his future lay in the crotches of droopy-dicked Americans. and he therefore finally obtained a legitimate enough degree from an unknown institution that said he specialized in, quote, the irritations and enlargement of the prostate in elderly men. He also got accredited by the State Board of Health of Missouri, which put him on the same level as his legitimate allopath contemporaries. By 1916, Brinkley had purchased medical licenses in six other states where the standards were just as low as Missouri's, and the world in which he could ply his trade became that much larger for John Brinkley. It was all kind of there for him. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, you're willing to put... He did work hard at becoming a huckster. Yeah, that's the thing. He really put a lot of hours in. If he really would have... If he just would have studied medicine... He might have been a doctor. It would have taken the same amount of time. Well, I'm going to get to that here in a second, actually. Now, it took a little while for Brinkley to establish himself as a doctor in Kansas City, so he took a second job to make ends meet. This side hustle, however, was what gave Brinkley the idea for which he would become infamous. Brinkley got a job at a meat packing plant called the Swift Packing Company, and during a conversation with government meat and the idea for which he would become infamous. the idea for which he would become infamous. Brinkley got a job at a meatpacking plant called the Swift Packing Company, and during a conversation with government meat inspectors one day about diseases jumping from animal to man, Brinkley was told that goats were immune to all diseases that were harmful and contagious to humans. The inspectors told Brinkley that the goat was the safest animal to eat because they'd observed half a million goats being slaughtered. Never once have I seen an illness jump from goat to man. Goat's strong, man. You can hit him in the head with a hammer. But it's not true. It's not true. It's not true. Beats go jump all the time. You get sick from a goat. Goat's strong. Several. Yeah, but his strongness puts an illness in you. But he can. I know. It's bad, dude. Our glands, their glands are different. Yeah, they dance on the side of the mountains. They're cool, man. It is fun. I like them. Several diseases can carry from goats to humans. But Brinkley took what these inspectors said is gospel. And when he combined that with his obsession over the gland studies of Dr. Henry Harrower, the first seeds of an infamous idea were planted. And by 1917, Brinkley and his new wife, Minnie, had settled in the town of Fulton, Kansas, where Brinkley specialized in elder care, filling prescriptions for constipation, liver problems, and kidney dysfunction. Reportedly, this is where Brinkley developed one of his favorite slogans, which of course slyly referred to the penis. He said, quote, An old stovepipe won't draw if it isn't cleaned out. You gotta clean out your stovepipe. I mean, it makes sense. What does that mean, though? So, like, it means that you need to cum? Yeah, if your cum doesn't come out, it creates a little pocket in there, and then it just gets all caught up in there. Well, it's not just cum, it's also piss and shit as well. If you're not shitting on the regular and you're not pissing well and you're not cumming, then that old soap hop won't draw. Yeah, because then you won't do it because you're not getting any liquids in if you can't get liquids out. It's just, I mean, it's one of those folksy things that sounds good, but ultimately doesn't make any sense. Doesn't mean anything. Yeah, it doesn't mean anything at all. It's like the kind of slogan that means nothing but would make you president. Yeah. Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, Fulton was also where Brinkley grew out his trademark facial hair, a mustache and a goatee. And his hair was very much what we referred to a few years ago as the fashy style. High and tight Actually if you look at a picture of Brinkley back then Google it he would not be at all out of place as a proud boy or a similar alt shithead today Apparently, there's something quite attractive about this style to a certain type of person. Fascists love this style because even though Brinkley was styling himself like this in 1917, he would one day become a staunch supporter of Adolf Hitler. Mmm, yeah. But back in 1917, Brinkley and many decided that their dreams were bigger than treating constipation in old men. So in October of that year, they found a tiny town in Kansas called Milford that had no more than 200 people. There, they opened their own fucking hospital, which was apparently... You could just do that in 1917. Dude, last hospital on the left. Thanks, bud. Dan, last prison on the left. Yeah, yeah. In the last hospital on the left, Can all the doctors be clowns? Absolutely. I mean, you own it. Okay. That is true. All right. That's great. Yeah. Once everything gets like fully deregulated within like 10 years and we can truly start doing some really insane shit. Really? Oh, man. Oh, yeah. It's going to get bad. We want to practice one in Guam. All right. Great. Oh, just in a territory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't know. You know that Minnie's full name is Minerva Eliza Mouse? That's her full official name. Minerva Eliza Mouse. Yeah. That's obviously named after his father. It was Elias. Yeah. Let me ask you this, though. What's her maiden name? Oh. Because it implies if her name is Mouse, that implies that Mickey and Minnie are already related. Oh, interesting. Minerva Eliza Rat. Yeah. Hitler. Oh, my God. She's a Hitler. It was back before it was controversial. Hey, shall we all be judged by the worst person in our family? Thank you. Finally, somebody said it. Minnie soon actually earned a medical degree from the same type of diploma mill in Missouri where John had gotten his degree. And she also got a barely legitimate graduate degree in nursing. So while John acted as president of the brand new Brinkley Jones Hospital, Minnie was the vice president. But while Brinkley was a charming and friendly person he also proved himself to be quarrelsome See the mayor of Milford had a beloved pet cat and his cat somehow ate John Brinkley pet canary You don't fucking want to get into his bullshit with the birds. Fuck no. Brinkley shot and killed the mayor's cat, which resulted in a public feud. So did he live next door? Did he bring the bird to work? Like, how did this fucking happen? The book did not go into full detail. You know, like, it was just the mayor's cat ate Brinkley's canary, and so Brinkley killed the mayor's cat. If you're a bird owner, you got to keep the windows shut. Not just for the bird to fly out, but so cats don't get in. How did the cat get inside the cage? It's Brinkley's fault. Brinkley should have fucking killed himself. You're right. Well, Brinkley's feud with the mayor of Milford ended up being Brinkley's introduction into politics. He got so pissed off at the mayor that he tried taking the mayor's job. He announced he's running for office using the cumbersome slogan, Clean up, clean out, keep clean. Terrible. Clean up, clean out, but keep clean. Okay, so get rid of it. Stay clean. Clean up, clean out, keep clean. Clean over. Clean is all about being clean. Brinkley won He won the election And this is so I feel so bad for this mayor Brinkley claimed that the margin of victory Was so wide that the poor mayor Whose cat he killed Man sold his business and left town forever He's a sore loser dude He should have fucking killed his bird And now the mayor's a dog Now while John Brinkley's Destinies would eventually lay elsewhere, Milford, Kansas was where he would build the business and develop the procedure that would make him a millionaire. And he owed it all to a farmer who approached him not two weeks after John and Millie arrived in town. This farmer went to John's office and told Brinkley that he and his wife were trying to have another child, but in the boudoir the farmer was, as he put it, it's a flat tire down there, doc. Ain't nothing happening. No pet. No other flat tire. duck fat tie. Men will say anything, but my dick doesn't work. Yeah, I mean, I don't understand. That's all. It's like a deflated balloon animal It just soup in my pants Yeah that all it is I sitting on the greenie And I wish I could make a manicotti Well, no other doctor could figure out the source of this farmer's impotence. So the farmer asked the new doctor in town... Have you thought about it being my ugly ass wife? Yes, sir. Is there a fucking problem? So the farmer asked the new doctor in town if he could help. Now, Brinkley had been working with older, impotent men for years by this point due to his specialty as a prostate man. But I'm a prostate man! Yeah, so he knew how gullible and desperate older men could be when they started having trouble in the bedroom. So Brinkley started with the soft cell, telling the farmer that he'd treated many sexually weak men with serums, medicine, even tried electricity, never found a full-on cure. One time I had a man put a rod inside of the length of his memba. I tied a kite to it. I flew it over the town square when the thunderstorm came. And that's how I invented shocking somebody's balls with lightning. Did he get an erection? No. No. Killed him stone dead. You, sir, are what we call sexually weak. It's such a funny thing to say. You're sexually weak. Well, Brinkley then offhandedly commented that when he was working at that meat packing plant, them goats in them stockyards, they didn't have any trouble with virility at all. God, I love watching them goats fuck each other. Honestly, at first, of course, I was entertained. I was educated, but then also, I was jealous. Well, and the farmer seemed intrigued about the virility of these goats. You know what I'm saying. Brinkley said that the farmer, he wouldn't have any trouble if he had a pair of those butt glands in him. You need goat balls. So the farmer supposedly asked, well, why don't you put them in? Well, that would be impossible, but... Incredible. Oh my God, Farah, you're not a doctor, but are you a doctor? Did you go to the University of Arts and Science? Yeah. Why stop there? Put it on the penis. Now Brinkley claimed... I want a swan's brain. Can we do that? Now Brinkley claimed that Why stop there? Why stop there? Put it on the penis. I want a swan's brain. Can we do that? Brinkley claimed that he was initially against the idea. Oh, I couldn't possibly. Balls and balls. But if you know anything about how scams work, it was obvious that Brinkley was leading this farmer into thinking that the whole thing was the farmer's idea. That'd be too incredible. That'd be too fantastic of a... Too quick and too painless of a... I don't think we can do it. I just don't know. It's just so cheap. I don't know. Brinkley argued that he didn't want people finding out that he'd done such a procedure. But the farmer said, I mean, who's to hear about it unless you tell them? And Brinkley then tried another excuse saying, farmer, I don't have a goat. Yeah, where's the money to even find these so-called goat balls? Well, the farmer said, well, hell, I got a goat. I raise him. I provide the goddamn goat. Well, I just, you are tying my hands to this. So Brinkley agreed to implant goat testicles into the farmer's scrotum for $150. I'll do it for $150. I'll do it for $150 $150 $200 if I gotta get the old testicles myself I know it's an odd number $75 for a ball I actually view it as $50 per human balls taken out $25 to put in the goat balls Well two weeks later the farmer returned to report the operation huge success I certainly got four balls now. That is for certain. So, like, did he, I mean, I'm sure this isn't in the book, but, like, did he bring the goat? Did he just slice off the goat's balls and then just bring the balls? Do you think it's like Indiana Jones where he has to weigh the balls in one hand and then weigh the goat balls in the other hand and see if they match? Imagine going through your goats and trying to figure out which one gets hardest. Now listen here. I just want to... This may seem a bit unorthodox, but this is the first time I doing this procedure Now Mr Farmer I like you to line up the goats Now I like for you to bend over I like you to remove your pants now Excellent Now I just going to look and observe. Because you know they always have those big, like, little pincher things? The protractor, yeah. I'm just looking at all the goats' balls. Do me a favor. Show the goats your breasts. See if we can get them along. Get your wife out here. Get your wife out here. Get out here. I'm going to tell you. He actually did it. Yeah. Brinkley did implant goat testicles into a man's scrotum. And the man did live. Crazy. But it's also important to note that Brinkley used the testicles of baby goats no older than a month. Because the testicles of a full-grown adult goat are fucking massive. How big? 15 inches of a circumference. It's fine. Your balls? Okay, not your balls. Let's not use yours as an example because I know they're abnormally large. Mine are ready to hatch. Well, human testicles comparatively have a circumference of only two to three inches. Normally. So if he was putting a whole goat testicle in there, it was always baby goats between two and four weeks old. I got all kinds of conference. All kinds of conference. I got to say, Dr. Brinkley, I do think it's great. This has honestly been wonderful so far. But with the little baby goat's balls in there, I just feel, just kind of makes me feel like a kid. I just kind of wish I had a fucking big old, big old set. You know, a big old set. You're the only guy I know that I can call a kid fucker and it's a compliment. Thank you. I've also had sex with my daughter. Who is 22 years old. She is of age. She is of age. Well, the story of the farmer... It's one horn to go. He couldn't even believe it. Well, the story of the farmer convincing Brinkley was Brinkley's version of the tale. Of course. According to other sources, Brinkley actually begged the farmer... You like footballs. It's going to be the funnest thing in the world. You wouldn't even believe it. You're going to notice that these balls aren't in there. Please. Please. You got to let me. You got to let me. I had a dream last night. He begged the farmer to let him try it, according to other sources. And he only managed to get the farmer to agree after Brinkley told him that he would pay him hundreds of dollars Honestly sure Yeah but no matter how the goat testicles got in the farmer scrotum word spread that Dr Brinkley had cured this farmer impotence because, as I said, men seem to love talking about their impotence after it had been cured. I could just see the sun coming up, the farmer's up there, he's ready to sell his feed, and he leaves his house triumphant but nude. Hard as the dickens. He's like, you see? Do you see what I got going on here? And they're all like, man. Wow. Wow. I wonder how long it took to heal. I mean, it's just cutting it open and throwing it in. I just don't think that gets, how is that possible? How is it possible to just cut open your balls? When I got my hernia surgery, my fucking whole balls just exploded. They were huge. Well, they were actually doing medical procedures. I know. That's what I'm saying. I wonder how long it fucking took for this guy to heal and then have sex again. Did he literally just cut a hole in the balls and like the testicle skin and then just stick balls in there? Yeah. Wow. Every once in a while he would like- Remove the previous balls? No, no. Every once in a while he would kind of like try to tie one vessel to another vessel, but he didn't know why he was doing it. He didn't know, it didn't do anything. We'll get into it a little further. like later on because this is just this is when he's just doing it for the first time the first time he does it he really does just he cuts a guy's ball sack open he puts a tiny little baby goat testicle in there sews him back up and the guy shows up two weeks later and says i can get hard again now let's go i'm just gonna say like a little matryoshka doll go to sleep my own prince could have just used m&ms what's telling you though is that in milford kansas which is a town of only 200 people, multiple men soon approached Brinkley about doing this same procedure, which tells you how prevalent impotence was and is. I mean, Lord knows with what they were, like the different elixirs they were drinking and the fucking liquors. Lord knows what whiskey was back then. Oh, my God. Oh, remember we had some. I had some Prohibition-era whiskey, like old-timey whiskey. It's fucking disgusting. Yeah, well, that was Prohibition-era whiskey. Yeah, that was gross. That was different, yeah. It just tastes like medicine. Get you fucked up though So after the farmer One of Brinkley next patients was a man named William Stitsworth But Stitsworth included his wife in the deal So while Brinkley is best known for goat testicles he also routinely implanted goat ovaries into women. That's why he's called the goat gland man and not the goat testicle man. Oh, wow. The Stitsworths, therefore, both got the goat gland treatment. And when I say implanted, I really do mean that Brinkley just cut these people open, nestled the glands in the approximate area where he thought they might help. Yeah, right. Let me see here. Yeah. And then he sewed these people back up. Jesus Christ. But the placebo effect was apparently working overtime in Milford because soon after Stitsworth and his wife got goat parts sewn into their bodies, the wife got pregnant, and in honor of the procedure, they actually named their baby son Billy. That's cute. It is cute. It's cute. I just don't understand that it didn't completely mutilate her. Well, it just also shows, well, our bodies are like, again, you know, we're experts here. But on sidestorieslpotl at gmail.com, please tell me how I'm wrong. But I do believe the human body is filled. There are like spaces. So a part of what goes on, like one of my really good friends had a hysterectomy. and like said one of the weirdest parts about the the after was feeling your organs slowly reposition themselves because they put themselves back into place like you basically just sew back up and the organs just go back to work so i think it just flop it on there and then i don't know how they don't get blood poisoning yeah that i don't understand i have no idea how people did oh it was That's right. There's a whole two episodes about it. 42 people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's bad for you. It's not working. That's the thing. Not all those 42 died from the goat gland surgery, but it did become deadly. In the early days, though, he fucking struck gold. Like, he absolutely struck gold with these goat glands. So he put the Stitworth family on his payroll to advertise the success of the goat gland operation. And remember, nobody knows why anything really, well, some people know. But, you know, like, they're like, okay, we don't know why this works. But, I mean, even still today, there are certain medical treatments that are like, we don't know why this works. It just does. It just does. And back then, it's the same shit. They're like, and so as far as Brinkley's concerned, like, okay, so's the same shit. And back then, it's the same shit. They're like, and so as far as Brinkley's concerned, like, okay, so this guy got hard and these two people got pregnant. This works. It has to work. Do you think he might have believed it for a second? He believed it 100%. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, because as far as he's concerned, he doesn't know why it works. He's just knowing, like, all right, this is working. All he knows is that medicine's easy. Medicine's super fucking easy. You just kind of guess and it always works out. It just crushes it, man. Well, Billy Stitsworth was dubbed the goat gland baby. Hi. And pictures of Brinkley holding Billy were published in newspaper advertisements across the country. Some of these ads were aimed at women, claiming that implanting goat ovaries could enhance fertility, reduce wrinkles, and increase bust size. Those, he did know, were all lies. Yeah, because goats always have big tits. Yeah. Brinkley even expanded the uses of his surgery to claim that goat gland implants could cure certain types of mental illness. In one case, Brinkley claimed that he'd implanted a goat testicle into the scrotum of a mental patient who'd been committed to an asylum for excessive and compulsive masturbation. The man supposedly recovered from his masturbation addiction fully after his surgery and supposedly went on to become a prominent yet unnamed bank executive in Kansas City. He couldn't use his penis at all. That's what I got done with him. He's just like, well, I guess I'm done masturbating. Time to focus on business. Yes, I will learn how to run a bank. See, that's also one of those things you don't understand. Once the penis goes away, there's so much room for other stuff. Yeah, there is. There really is. Now, while treatments for women and mental patients were all well and good, it soon became clear that most of the people interested in the goat gland procedure were men looking to cure their impotence. There were, however, side effects, although this part may or may not be true. It was said that in the first few goat gland implants, a smell would begin to emanate from the patient depending on what type of goat gland Brinkley put in their body. Oh, like rotting flesh? Yeah. Like it was dying inside of them? Yeah. Was it connected to anything? It was just meat that he put in there? Yeah. I think most people describe it as decay. I believe... Do I smell to you? I've come to believe my flesh is rotting. My flesh is rotting Oh that smell you smelling That my dick working Yeah Well Brinkley said that if he used a gland from the particularly odorous Angora goat the patient would give off a goat-like musk, which certainly didn't help with the patient's sex life. But while it was said that the odor eventually wore off, Brinkley ensured that from then on, he would only obtain testicles from odorless Toggenberg goats. Odorless goats. So he began building relationships with several Toggenberg goat farmers so he could have a constant supply of baby goat testicles. They scrub these goats so hard, man, these goats barely stink. Barely. The idea of odorless goats is as funny. Like, even just that concept is a funny idea. Let's say relatively odorless. But in his mind, being like, yes, excellent. Yes. An odorless goat. Odorless goat. While Brinkley was obviously a con man who had no idea why his procedure was working, The sad part is that there seemed to be an actual doctor within John Brinkley. During one shining moment in his life, Brinkley became Midwest famous during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic for his uncanny ability to get patients through the disease. Basically, he used his father's mountain man techniques like all these old folk remedies. While the Spanish flu killed at least 17 million people worldwide, Brinkley treated some 1,100 cases in Kansas, and it was said that he only lost one patient. I mean, there probably were a few more than that, but even if it was like 5 or 10 out of 1,100, that is an astonishingly low number. The key is to put some goat balls inside of him, and then they die of the goat ball injection. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Usually, right before they're about to die, I just shoot them in the head. That's a good job, Will. I took another one from the flu! Brinkley also had a knack for appendectomies and tonsillectomies. Even though, you know, an apnea is the simplest procedure that a surgeon can perform, he was still very good at them. And he was charming enough to get rural folk to trust surgery as a legitimate treatment, which was no small task in the 1910s. Brinkley even performed these surgeries for free most of the time, depending on how poor his patients were. Now, this is probably all for publicity, but the fact remains that Dr. Brinkley did have the ability to save lives. He could have been a good man and he chose to be a piece of shit Now Brinkley soon became a bit of a media darling both for his generosity amongst the rural poor and for his seemingly miraculous ability to make men hard again by implanting goat glands in their scrotum. His fame soon reached the East Coast, and an advertising executive traveled out to Kansas to tell Brinkley that goat glands were a million-dollar idea, akin to discovering the Fountain of Youth. Now, Brinkley had tried to submit a paper to the American Medical Association about his goat gland operation, but was rightfully rejected for publication. So he said, fuck him. He hired the East Coast Advertiser to collect patient testimonials and publish them in newspapers across America and Europe. He used slogans such as these. A man is as old as his glands. Get new glands. Be a new man. New glands, new man. Before long, people were traveling the tiny town of Milford, Kansas, from all over the world to get goat glands implanted in their scrotums and uteruses, but they were doing it for far more than just impotence and infertility. Brinkley claimed that implanting goat glands could cure 27 different ailments with a 95% success rate. Although, according to Brinkley, the procedure, quote, worked less well on stupid types. See, a man must have evidence. He has to have intelligence. I was like, when he dies, that's amazing. Must have been stupid. That was crazy. He was too stupid to be cured. But if you had the brains for it, Brinkley claimed that goat glands could cure everything from emphysema to excessive flatulence. I put two goat balls up in your butt. That keeps the farts from coming out. I'm not an idiot. It worked. Now as Brinkley performed more operations He developed different methods Although there was no rhyme or reason behind these methods Sometimes he'd cut slivers of the goat gland Like one would slice a clove of garlic And just toss the pieces inside the patient's scrotum or uterus Anybody ever tell you got a tight sack, son? This is a tight sack, ain't much gift How did a man have some give in there, some let? There's nothing let in this sack. See, you could half hard. You could use half a goat ball. You're right. You're right. Well every once in a while he actually carve out a hole to place a piece of the goat testicle into the human testicle Like as author Alton Lee so eloquently put it embedding a marble into an apple. That's just bad. That's bad science, man. That's really bad science. Yeah, he's just bored at this point. Other times, though, Brinkley would just toss a full goat gland into the scrotum and call it a day. God, I love a roomy one. From what it seems like, the intricacies of Brinkley's procedures may have depended on how drunk he was when he was performing the operation. Oh, yeah. Because Brinkley had developed quite the drinking problem over the years, and it was only getting worse, and he was well known for performing these operations quite hammered. It's easy. You need some more peas in your pod? Come on down to Brinkley's. Hey, listen, just listen. You gotta understand, a couple drinks makes me a better surgeon. That's how it is. Here's my slice of beer. Fizz, you want a real-life surgeon. You don't want a surgeon who's all like fucking... Tell me about it. Tell me about it. You're the drunkest doctor I've ever seen, and I'm the drunkest patient I've ever been. Now, with all the... Oh, and also, Brinkley, his assistants didn't really give a shit whether he was drunk or not because he made sure to only hire people who had no experience. Of course, and he paid them at the ass. Yeah. Now, with all the attention and money Brinkley was getting off goat glands, He and Minnie use their newfound fame and success to basically make Milford, Kansas into a goat gland company town, because despite its many flaws, America truly is a strange and wonderful place. Welcome to Milford, Kansas. Goat glands as far as I can see. A town built on impotence. It's the goat gland capital of the Midwest. Now, we can't actually say the nation because there is a town in Oregon that really does goat glands better than we do. They do, yeah. They put the organ in Oregon. You know what I'm saying? They do all their glands over there. Now, when John and Minnie Brinkley moved to Milford, this town of 200 had no high schools, no traffic lights, no paved roads, no running water, and no electricity. And it's not like this is 1850. John and Minnie moved there in 1917. But within just a year, John Brinkley and Minnie Brinkley had expanded their hospital with money Minnie had inherited from rich deceased relatives. They made it a teaching hospital of all things. Oh, no. And renamed it the Brinkley Institute of Health. from rich deceased relatives. from rich deceased relatives. They made it a teaching hospital of all things. Oh no. And renamed it the Brinkley Institute of Health. The back lot of the hospital held what else but goat pens, both for show and for sourcing testicles and ovaries. John and Minnie These poor fucking goats dude. They're just sitting there just like I wonder what's going to happen on this farm. Oh remember, it's all baby goats. It's all baby goat testicles. Now who's your next? Can they take out the goat's balls and then let them live, or do they have to kill them? Yeah, of course you can. That's great. It's called neutering. We do it to cats and dogs. But I thought that, well, I guess he's not really trying to really do anything with them. I bet they served them in the restaurant. Probably, yeah. Yeah, I guess he didn't have to be too careful with them. Yeah. Goat meat's delicious. I do like goat meat. I love goat. I love lamb. Lamb is my favorite meat. You've got to be careful with goat, though. It's got the tiny bones. It can get jagged, and it gets in your throat, and it can cut your throat, and then you're puking up blood on an airplane. and they gotta pull over and you gotta die. Yeah, I've heard that. Well, John and Minnie... Nothing to do with my balls, though. Well, John and Minnie reinvested in Milford at large. They brought electricity, running water, paved roads, and sewage services by 1918, making the Brinkley's the heroes and saviors of Milford, Kansas. Anytime you meet a man with a limp penis, you thank him. Yeah. You go and you thank him for helping build Milford. See, this building is built all on goat balls. Literally The whole first floor On Christmas, John and Minnie would toss ducks and turkeys Fine fat gooses From second story windows To the town's poor From the hospital Briefly even had a town zoo Zoo however was closed After the bear escaped And John was forced to shoot and kill it Lest the bear begin eating the residents of Milford He's wearing a lot of hats He's wearing a lot of stuff I don't want to see the doctor of the town. He runs all that. He's the zoo owner. He's the mayor. He's the mayor. And so then he also has to go kill the bears. He is a terror to animals. I love that. He's just throwing ducks and turkeys out of a second story window. I have a question. Have you ever thought about me replacing your wife's breasts with parrots? Have you ever thought about what it would be like if I cut your wife's breasts off and I put parrots in there? Yeah, a couple of tweeters. Oh hooters Yes Take me with you It was right there It really was It was right there By 1927 the people of Milford were so in love with the Brinkleys that they named their basketball team the Brinkley Goats. Wow. Featured a picture of a billy goat and the words Dr. Brinkley printed on their uniforms. I wish the mascot just had a giant dick. A big floppy dick. And it just gets hard every time they score. That's what I like to see. John and Minnie, meanwhile, continued their study of gland implementation Although they still weren't sure how any of this actually worked So they went to Chicago to attend lectures and take courses from a doctor named Max Thorek Who was performing similar sexual rejuvenation surgeries using gorilla testicles Jesus fucking Christ, dude That's way worse It's like goats are everywhere Yeah, I can tell Goats are everywhere in America I don't care. Goats. Who gives a shit? You don't need a boat. You know what I mean? Like, the idea of, like, something that's going, like, it's like signing, like, no cut balls. Don't cut balls. Me need balls. You know, like, they have to go. I can't handle that. It just seems so unnecessary. But it's just being like, you know, I don't want to go in there with that monkey sign. It's the last thing I want to deal with is a banana. Hold on a second. I'm sick and tired of bananas. And I will not, I will not cotton to this banana-based science. Brinkley, however, failed Dr. Thorick's course because he couldn't stay sober. He was a fucking drunk. And Dr. Thorick went on record to state that Brinkley was only concerned with making money. I love killing monkeys. That's why I'm in it. I'm in it to kill monkeys and to cut open balls. Brinkley's excessive drinking, however, was not just hampering his career. Turns out with Milford, when you shake hands with the devil, you get burned. His drinking was causing a lot of problems back home in Milford. There were many, many instances of Brinkley getting violent while drinking. Violent with the townspeople. There were several accounts of him getting drunk and chasing the people of Milford around with knives, axes, guns. Let me get you a bowl. Honey, hide. Honey, hide. The mayor's out. Like having everyone hiding like a pumpkin head Like at night I mean shut the drawer Shut the Don answer the door The mayor been drinking The mayor been drinking Let me see your balls He just got a belt Let me see your balls. I'll cut open a ball anywhere, anytime. I'll do it on the basketball court right now. Let me try it with the gun. I'm going to try the surgery with the gun. Come closer. I know you can't get hard. Stay still. This was the place where he fucking cut off his colleague's ear. or bit the ear off. We don't know. He would chase people out of the... All of a sudden, you're walking down the street in Milford, someone's screaming out of the fucking hospital and John Brinkley drunk, chasing after him with a big-ass knife. He owns the joint. Yes, he does. That's my doctor. There goes the best goddamn mayor this town ever had. You know what? We just got to let him blow it off. Let him blow off the steam, all right? You know, before him, we didn't have roads. Think about that. He'd put in every toilet. I was shitting in a hole in my backyard. That man who was chasing that group of children around literally with a knife and a hammer, that man saved my life. Brinkley's preferred gun was a revolver that he carried with him everywhere, which was mostly used to threaten people who didn't pay their medical bills. Sometimes I find when people miss a payment, I find that the prescription is three lead pills. Reportedly, Brinkley would use the vialist language while making these threats, although I have no idea what exactly that language was. Don't make me stick this up your pussy and turn your pussy in your asshole. Jesus, Dr. Brinkley. I'll fuck up your fucking pussy the way I fucked up every fucking gorilla in the fucking banana ass fuck. Fuck ass banana fuck fuck. All right, Dr. Brinkley. All right, just put a comma in there and we'll work on it. Let's work on this. Brinkley was turning into a full-on public nuisance in Milford, incident by incident. I'm the goat ball guy. One night, things got so bad that the local sheriff got a call that Brinkley was on such a rampage with his pistol that the whole town was in hiding. Sheriff, you've got to come out. No one's coming outside. Dr. Brinkley's got a gun, and he's saying he's going to kill anybody he sees. If the sun stick wouldn't work, I'd hollow out Venus, and then I'd put it inside the sun's balls. It's like when Mongo comes to town. In other words Brinkley was coming close to wearing out his welcome in the town that had made him But luckily for Dr Brinkley there was a city full of desperate fools obsessed with sex way out west who were more than ready to welcome him with open arms. Next stop, Los Angeles! Ah, fix me! Yes, land of peptides. Yes. And that is where we'll pick back up for the conclusion to this incredibly stupid story next week. Popping in balls. Oh, my God. This was great. You know what I love about this truly is that when I first was reading about it, you're just like, oh, you know, I figured it was like a procedure. Like, he kind of, like, stuck, like, you know, like, I thought, like, maybe he, like, got some fluid out of the balls. You know what I mean? And it's just amazing to know that, nah, he's just cutting open ball sacks and tossing other animals' balls in there. And doing it drunk. Just doing it drunk. That's amazing. It is. This is another one of those guys that I kind of like. Yeah. Well, I mean, he is a Nazi. Yeah. You're not going to like him. That's always him. That's always the hitch. See, no, but that's good, though. I'm glad he became a Nazi. It's good he became a Nazi because all this has got to go somewhere. If this all led to him inventing bubble gum or him being like, if it went to that world, if he was the first guy to put the Twix out, that'd be something else. And that's the creator of RC Cola. Then we'd have to deal with that. Yeah. Like, we'd have to, as a country, we'd still have to ask these questions. There's no legacy to grapple with here. No, it's good. This is just a very stupid chapter of American history that proves that, again and again, like, Americans is just, we just need a lot more patience. Yeah. We've always needed a lot more patients. We do. Except for Dr. Brinkley. He needed less patients. Much less. He liked me, though. They're forcing me to be a doctor. Patreon.com. That's the last podcast on the left. That's where you can go if you want ad-free episodes. You can also check out our stream every Tuesday. Thank you for allowing us to take this Tuesday off. I got the worst, most incredible con crowd of my life from New York Comic Con. I got real bad at Comic-Con. And if there's anybody who's running New York Comic-Con listening right now, fucking sell less tickets next year. It is a fucking nightmare. It was slag. who's running New York Comic Con, listening right now, who's running New York Comic Con, listening right now, fucking sell less tickets next year. It is a fucking nightmare. It was slam. It was so much worse. I've been going to Comic Con for 20 fucking years, and that was by far, by far the worst that it's ever been. It was very anxiety-inducing. It was really intense in there. When I came in, I really hung over, and they were pumping that super horrific artificial popcorn smell in there. I thought I was going to fucking vomit all over myself. Yeah, sell less fucking passes. But we do. Honestly, otherwise, the panel was great. The signing was great. Meeting everybody was awesome. I want to say thank you to everybody who came out to our panel. It was so much fun. Thanks to everyone who came out to our table for the signing. It was so great to meet all of you guys. There were so many wonderful fans that came out to New York Comic Con. My graph ain't with y'all. It's with the fucking con. Jesus Christ. Oh, and Brooklyn, Warsaw was so much fun. Oh, it was great. Marcus had his first side story show. He broke his side story's cherry. He came out and said hi. We had a wonderful bear and trumpei. It was a blast. Henry and I got a lot more shows coming up. We're going to be in Redway at the Mateel Community Center. It's actually the whole thing's going to be a benefit for the community. We're putting the money back into Redway. Y'all deserve it. You've been so good to us all these years. We're coming back. This one's for y'all. The following night, I'm going to be with Billy Wayne Davis co-headlining. Actually following afternoon 3 p at Cobb Comedy Club in San Francisco That amazing This Sunday It going to be a blast And then you can catch Ed Larson and Friends December 3rd at the Ice House hosted by Henry Zebrowski Yeah! It's going to be a fucking blast. And then St. Louis on December 13th, Zany's Comedy Club on January 24th with the Reformed Whores, and then with Danny Bedrosian, January 29th and the 30th in Rochester, New York, and then the Albany Funny Bone on January 31st. More dates are coming. And then plus side stories is fucking cooking. We got Burlington, Iowa City, Columbia, Missouri, and a whole bunch more going to get booked soon. I can't wait. Yeah, fuckers. We'll see you over on YouTube. Go check it out. Bloodbath 77 is all the way wrapped up. We got a new season just about to start filming, and we will talk about that. Tears of a Clown. Back. It's back. Yeah. So it's really gotten new. You guys would like that. Go check out LPN TV over on YouTube. Go and check it out. And go check out all the other new stuff over there. We don't talk in space doing video episodes someplace underneath. Page seven, the brighter side, LPN Romantasy, the foreign report. Go check out all the hard work we were doing over here at the fucking laugh factory. And hail sweet Satan. In honor of our flim flam, man, I'd like to hail fraudsters. Yeah. The wonderful show here on the Last Podcast Network hosted by Sina Kasnavi, Justin Williams, and Ariel Lieti. Go check it out. It's a fucking phenomenal show. It's always great. It's always good. Goodbye. Bye. Enjoy your balls.