Statesmen, Scoundrels, and Eccentrics: A Gallery of Amazing Arkansans

Dr. John R. Brinkley

Dr. John R. Brinkley Located a few miles south of Little Rock on Arch Street Pike stands a majestic building that has had a remarkably diverse history. The large stone structure was built in the s by the Shriners as a country club, but it failed and later became a Roman Catholic Carmelite Monastery. Between the Shriners and the Catholics, however, the building was owned by one of America’s most famed medical quacks, Dr. John R. Brinkley. Born into a North Carolina family of modest means in ,young John worked at a variety of jobs,all the time consuming a strange combination of books on home medical treatment and theology. In  he married and began practicing medicine as a “Quaker doctor,” whatever that was. He then relocated to Chicago, where he studied at Bennett Medical College, a school for “eclectic” physicians. After giving birth to four children in less than six years,the hapless Mrs. Brinkley got a divorce in . Immediately remarrying, Brinkley began practicing in South Carolina as an “Electro Medic Doctor.” After spending a while in jail for failure to pay his bills, Brinkley relocated to Judsonia, White County, Arkansas, where he had a successful practice. But, he had much grander dreams. In  Brinkley graduated from the Eclectic Medical University in Kansas City, Missouri, a diploma mill recognized by only eight state medical boards, including that of Arkansas. After being licensed in Arkansas, he soon left the state for Kansas, arriving in the little village of Milford with thirty dollars in his pocket, a medical bag, a Saxon automobile, and his new wife, Minnie Telitha Brinkley. And then his life really got interesting. Whatever Brinkley lacked in medical skill,he made up for in innovation and bravado. Realizing that impotent men would pay any price to have their sexual vigor restored, the new Kansas doctor developed a surgical procedure he called the goat-gland operation, by which he transplanted goat gonads into “tired men.” Many of his customers  were quite satisfied with the procedure, and soon Brinkley built his own hospital and a string of drugstores. And for good measure, he acquired a radio station. Brinkley used his radio station to sell a mixture of fundamentalist religion and sexual rejuvenation,prompting one historian to quip that the doctor transformed the three R’s into radio,rejuvenation,and religion . As many evangelists have discovered, the radio proved to be an easy way to riches. In  Brinkley’s world came crashing down when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) closed his radio station and the Kansas medical authorities revoked his license. He immediately began a campaign for governor as a write-in candidate. One biographer noted Brinkley’s penchant for political showmanship,including “such innovations as a private plane and sashaying around in the most expensive car ever seen in Kansas, lavish use of the radio, a sound truck, cheer leaders to drill the write-in vote, hillbilly music and an astrologer.” In  he again ran for governor, and he so split the vote that Republican Alf Landon was elected, the only Republican gubernatorial candidate to survive Franklin D. Roosevelt’s landslide. Brinkley was anything but a quitter, so he convinced Mexican authorities to allow him to build a radio station inVilla Acuna,Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, Texas. Having escaped the regulation of the FCC, Brinkley fitted his station, XER, with a huge ,-watt transmitter. The station could be heard across North America, drawing thousands of patients to Brinkley’s new hospital in Del Rio. Though Brinkley discontinued his goat gland operation while in Del Rio, he developed a prostate operation that was popular even though it was nothing more than a dressed-up vasectomy. He reportedly earned $ million during his Del Rio days. The arrival of a competitor , who performed the same operation at a discount, drove Brinkley from Texas to Arkansas, though he kept his residence in Del Rio and his Mexican radio station. He established a hospital in the old St. Luke’s Hospital at  Schiller, adding a Romulus Drug Store nearby. Though he operated in the Schiller Street hospital, he established a convalescence facility at  ECCENTRICS, FRAUDS, AND THE INEXPLICABLE the old Shriners Country Club, christening it the Brinkley Country Club Hospital. Things went smoothly for a while,but Brinkley’s luck ended when Dr. Morris Fishbein of the American Medical Association included him among a list of modern...