{"id":246,"date":"2010-08-30T19:36:06","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T19:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pmdc.wcu.edu\/?p=246"},"modified":"2023-06-20T13:20:54","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T13:20:54","slug":"dr-john-brinkly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/index.php\/2010\/08\/30\/dr-john-brinkly\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. John Brinkley"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Dr.<\/g> John Brinkley of Jackson County, North Carolina, made his fortune implanting goat glands into men who today would turn to Viagra. When both his Kansas medical and his radio station licenses were revoked in 1930, he retaliated by running unsuccessfully three times for governor of Kansas (in 1930, 1932, and 1934) and by building a new radio station. XERA\u2014with studios in Texas but its transmitter across the border in Mexico\u2014eventually broadcast with 500,000 watts of power in defiance of US regulations. Blanketing much of the United States, XERA made many country music performers famous. Brinkley died in 1942. You can see his house and the memorial he erected to his Aunt Sally who raised him on NC 107 south of Cullowhee in Jackson County.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Multimedia:<\/h3>\n

Below is the Digital Heritage Moment as broadcast on the radio:<\/h2>\n[audio:http:\/\/dh.wcu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Brinkly60Mx.mp3|titles=Dr John Brinkly]\n

[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.0.48″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_accordion _builder_version=”3.9″][et_pb_accordion_item title=”Dr. JOhn Brinkley essay” open=”off” _builder_version=”3.9″ title_text_shadow_horizontal_length=”0em” title_text_shadow_vertical_length=”0em” title_text_shadow_blur_strength=”0em” body_text_shadow_horizontal_length=”0em” body_text_shadow_vertical_length=”0em” body_text_shadow_blur_strength=”0em”]<\/p>\n

At<\/g> the turn of the 20th century, most areas of Appalachia remained rural and isolated.\u00a0 In North Carolina, the county of Jackson fit that description.\u00a0 It seemed unlikely the county would produce an individual who would go down in local and national history as one of the most colorful<\/g> characters of the 1920s and 1930s.\u00a0 Whether referred to as a snake-oil salesman, broadcast pioneer, controversial goat-gland doctor, or marketing genius, Dr.<\/g> John R. Brinkley touched millions of lives while living a flamboyant life that both his supporters and critics found impossible to ignore \u2013 and continue to speak of today.<\/p>\n

John Romulus Brinkley (he later changed his middle name to Richard) was born \u00a0July 8, \u00a01885<\/g> in the Beta community of Jackson County, North Carolina.\u00a0 He was the illegitimate son of John Brinkley and Sally Burnett.\u00a0 The elder Brinkley was a true \u201cmountain doctor,\u201d having \u201cread\u201d medicine, but with no formal training. \u00a0The younger Brinkley was orphaned at an early age and was raised primarily by his Aunt Sally.\u00a0 He attended a one-room school in the Tuckaseegee community where he displayed and developed his sharp intellect.\u00a0 However, there was little indication of what was yet to come.\u00a0 After a series of jobs, Brinkley enrolled in Bennett Medical College in Chicago and ultimately finished his coursework at Eclectic Medical University in Kansas City.\u00a0 Neither school was accredited; both awarded what was referred to as \u201c$500 diplomas\u201d implying tuition payment was the only true scholastic requirement.<\/p>\n

While still a student, Brinkley began dabbling into what was referred to as the \u201cwild side of medicine.\u201d\u00a0 At one point, he and one of his peers injected patients with colored<\/g> water, claiming that it was a miraculous cure for venereal disease.\u00a0 Later, after setting up practice in Milford, Kansas, Brinkley discovered what would become the foundation block of his fame, fortune, and eventual scorn.\u00a0 In 1918, a local farmer, suffering from failing virility, asked the doctor to implant in him a portion of the “sex gland” of a male goat.\u00a0 Brinkley obliged, the procedure was successful, and by both men\u2019s accounts, the farmer\u2019s life was \u201crestored.\u201d\u00a0 Brinkley seized the moment and publicized the operation and its beneficial results.\u00a0 Soon patients were lining up for the goat gland transplant.\u00a0 Within months, Brinkley was performing more than one hundred \u201crejuvenation\u201d operations a week for a fee of $750 each.\u00a0 One account recalls how patients were required to supply their own goat.\u00a0 Whether the goats made the \u201cultimate sacrifice\u201d or were simply \u201crobbed\u201d of their ability to procreate was debated.\u00a0 However, one thing is certain, on the eve of the Great Depression, Brinkley was on his way to unimaginable wealth.\u00a0 Searching for a method to attract additional patients, Brinkley quickly discovered another venture that contributed to his increasing notoriety, radio.<\/p>\n

Owning a personality which was not easily satisfied, Brinkley sought ways to expand his successes.\u00a0 In 1923, he bought the fourth commercial radio station in the U.S., KKFB in Milford, Kansas.\u00a0 He rapidly built it into a regional presence. \u00a0“Kansas First, Kansas Best”\u2013\u2013”the Sunshine Station from the Heart of the Nation.”\u00a0 KKFB provided weather reports for local farmers, market reports out of Chicago,<\/g> and gave early exposure to Western stars like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.\u00a0 KKFB was also the first station to offer college courses on the air, with lectures transmitted by telephone from what was then called Kansas State Agricultural College.\u00a0 Brinkley added fundamentalist preaching and regular programs offering medical advice, and through arrangements with pharmacies in the region, began prescribing medicine over the radio. \u00a0“But, oh my friends,” he would tell his listeners, “you must help me. Remember your letters asking advice must be accompanied by two dollars …” \u00a0KKFB added to Brinkley\u2019s fame and wealth, but his exposure and methods earned him enemies as well.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/p>\n

Dr.<\/g> Brinkley with an unidentified child. The Photograph is inscribed \u201cTo Professor Rob\u2019t. Madison, John R. Brinkley, Milford, KS, May 17 \u2013 1930.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

By the end of the 1920s, the American Medical Association was investigating the \u201cdoctor\u201d for malpractice. \u00a0The Kansas City Star<\/em> had published a series of articles accusing him of fraud and the newly formed Federal Radio Commission was looking into his broadcasting practices. \u00a0Consequently, Brinkley lost his Kansas medical license in 1929 and his radio station was forced to close in 1930.\u00a0 Brinkley chose politics as a method to fight back.\u00a0 He ran for governor of Kansas on a \u201cvindication\u201d ticket three times in the 1930s, never winning but adding to his notoriety nonetheless.\u00a0 In 1930, he polled a respectable 30.6 percent<\/g> of the vote.\u00a0 However, in both 1932 and 1934, he was defeated by future<\/g> presidential candidate, Alf Landon.<\/p>\n

Not to be discouraged, Brinkley moved to Del Rio, Texas and built a radio station, XERA, just across the Mexican border \u2013 out of reach of the U.S. regulators.\u00a0 Licensed for 300,000 watts by the Mexican government, XERA often turned up its power to 500,000, sometimes 1,000,000 watts \u2013\u2013”the world’s most powerful broadcasting station”, sending a signal across the U.S. into Canada, and occasionally over the North Pole into Russia.\u00a0 Several sources (some as doubtful as Brinkley\u2019s medical claims) report the Russians used XERA to teach English to their spies.\u00a0\u00a0 XERA\u2019s contributions to early country music were significant.\u00a0 Notably, the Carter Family performed for three years on \u201cTexas Radio\u201d rocketing them to national fame. \u00a0Waylon Jennings, growing up in Littlefield, Texas, remembered when his father used to pull the truck up beside the house and run a cable from the battery to the radio so he could listen to the Carter Family on XERA. \u00a0Johnny Cash also remembered hearing the Carter Family (including 10-year-old June, whom he would marry some three decades later) on the border radio broadcasts. \u00a0Radio shows such as the Grand Ole Opry on WSM Nashville, the National Barn Dance on WLS Chicago, and the Wheeling Jamboree on WWVA Wheeling, West Virginia, popularized \u201chillbilly music\u201d during the early days, but it was XERA and other \u201cX\u201d stations along the Mexican border that gave the musical style national exposure.\u00a0 Of course, there was also an economic component as well.\u00a0 Audiences heard on-air pitchmen selling everything from Crazy Water Crystals to baby chicks to tomato plants to Last Supper tablecloths to autographed pictures of Jesus.<\/p>\n

On one visit back to his native Jackson County in the 1930s, Dr.<\/g> Brinkley invited local musician Aunt Samantha Bumgarner to pack up her banjo and accompany him back to Texas.\u00a0 Bumgarner would go only if her friend, fiddler Harry Cagle could go as well.\u00a0 Brinkley agreed.\u00a0 Harry, who later formed Harry Cagle and the Country Cousins, recalls \u201criding out west in Brinkley’s big Cadillac with gold hubcaps with the letter “B” on them.\u201d\u00a0 For more than three years, Bumgarner and Cagle sang and played ole-timey<\/g> tunes on Dr.<\/g> Brinkley’s radio station.\u00a0 XERA was so powerful that folks back home in North Carolina could listen to their “banjo-picking ballad woman of the mountains.”<\/p>\n

In Texas, Brinkley added to his medical fortune.\u00a0 He used XERA to urge patients to visit his new clinic or buy a variety of gimmicks, including vials of colored<\/g> water, at a price of six for $100.\u00a0 Brinkley sold Peruna (“to knock out the torture of colds”) and Kolorbak (“scientifically imparts color<\/g> and charm to gray<\/g> hair”). \u00a0He rarely implanted real goat glands, but substituted what he described as “commercial glandular preparations.”\u00a0 He also performed numerous prostate operations and instituted the use of Mercurochrome shots and pills to help restore youthful vigor<\/g>.\u00a0 It is estimated he earned $12 million between 1933 and 1938. \u00a0However, his conspicuous display of wealth\u2013a lavish mansion, expensive cars, private planes, yachts, diamonds \u2013 got the attention of his adversaries.\u00a0 As the 1930s came to a close, so did the glorious career of Dr.<\/g> John Brinkley.\u00a0 He lost a libel suit against the AMA which left him branded as a quack. \u00a0His Mexican radio station was closed down and he found himself being investigated by the IRS for non-payment of taxes and by the U.S. Post Office for mail fraud.<\/p>\n

Brinkley\u2019s final years came swiftly.\u00a0 He declared bankruptcy in 1941. \u00a0The following year circulatory problems led to the amputation of one of his legs, and on May 26, 1942, he died in San Antonio of heart failure.\u00a0 Buried in Memphis, Brinkley left behind three daughters by his first wife Sally Wike, whom he had married in 1908 and one son by his second wife Minnie Jones, whom he married in 1913.\u00a0 He also left behind a farm in the Tuckaseegee community of Jackson County.\u00a0 The name \u201cBrinkley\u201d is still visible to passing motorists, prominently inlaid within the stone fence facing NC 107.\u00a0 Further down the road, a granite monument commissioned in the 1930s by the doctor to his Aunt Sally stands guard over the appropriately named Aunt Sally\u2019s curve.<\/p>\n

The life of Jackson County\u2019s John Romulus Brinkley is the stuff of Fairy Tales and Big Fish Stories.\u00a0 Not even fiction could have penned a more remarkable narrative.\u00a0 Dr.<\/g> Brinkley dabbled in medicine, politics, marketing, and media.\u00a0 He pioneered and experimented with early radio, initiating one of the most influential periods in the development of country music.\u00a0 His heritage belongs not only to his native Appalachian mountains,<\/g> but to the entire 20th<\/span>\u00a0century American experience.<\/p>\n

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