Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam

This book was fun, fun, fun. Imagine an average joe, declaring himself a doctor and deciding to surgically implant goat glands into humans to increase sex drive. Mix in the advent of radio advertising and the same guy mixing up sexuality and christianity and things really get weird. That alone should get you reading this book. Add in the hero - the man who tracks him down and tries to regulate...more

This book was fun, fun, fun. Imagine an average joe, declaring himself a doctor and deciding to surgically implant goat glands into humans to increase sex drive. Mix in the advent of radio advertising and the same guy mixing up sexuality and christianity and things really get weird. That alone should get you reading this book. Add in the hero - the man who tracks him down and tries to regulate his practice and its a barn burner of a read. Highly recommend.   hide

Books on Goat Glad Operations should be regulated to 50 pages or less and the jerk at Newsweek who described this book as enthralling owes me 5 hours of my life back.

A fascinating story that is almost too strange to be true.

Great Read - amazing true story on this Quack

A terrific book for the casual history fan. J. R. Brinkley, with no credible medical credentials, passed himself off as a surgeon and amassed a huge fortune praying on the timeless hope of old men to restore virility. He did it by surgically implanting goat testicles. He had such an enormous following that he ran for governor of Kansas as a write in candidate and would have won, but for...more

A terrific book for the casual history fan. J. R. Brinkley, with no credible medical credentials, passed himself off as a surgeon and amassed a huge fortune praying on the timeless hope of old men to restore virility. He did it by surgically implanting goat testicles. He had such an enormous following that he ran for governor of Kansas as a write in candidate and would have won, but for technicalities that the established parties used to block him. The civil law could hardly touch him. The fledgling AMA mounted a virtual crusade against him, getting his Kansas medical license revoked, getting the federal government to revoke his radio license, but Brinkley had friends in high places, himself, including LA Times publisher Harry Chandler and former vice president Curtis. He started the radio blasters from Mexico when the US authorities tried to shut him down. Harry Chandler was a big booster and wanted Brinkley to relocate to California. Chandler’s influence got Brinkley a 30 day temporary license in 1922 and his procedures were touted in the LA Times. Brinkley hoped to establish a 36 room hospital in Ensenada. But Morris Fishbein of the AMA and other medical doctors fought his licensing. Ultimately, California refused to issue him a medical license. The book notes that it is not only the uneducated classes that are gullible to these pitches. Free thinkers and trailblazers are susceptible too as the case of Eugene Debs, the long time communist candidate demonstrates. He ended his life at a sanitarium run by, another quack who espoused healing by naturopathy -- a regime that included astrological diagnosis, among other high sounding therapies. Debs more rational friends tried, but failed, to get him to leave the place.   hide