Goat Nut Stew (Dr. Brinkley and his false cure)


Big story here for a simple postcard. One of the hospitals built by John R. Brinkley after he was hounded out of Del Rio, Texas. "Doctor" Brinkley invented a technique of implanting, I kid you not, goat testicles into men who were experiencing what is now advertised on TV more than soap...Erectile dysfunction. That's right. Big-time quack Brinkley charged thousands of pre-depression era men $750 to fix their lagging libidos by injecting them with actual goat nuggies. He is rumored to have given the goat nut cure to one of our Vice-Presidents, not to mention hundreds of poor farmers who had the unfortunate curse of being born before Viagra. He ran for Governor of Kansas and apparently won, but the election was stolen from him by legal maneuvers. As his lucrative radio advertising was being banned in the US, he opened the huge airwave busting XERA radio station in Mexico simply to promote his cure, thus bringing us border radio. No less than the Carter Family were played on his station. THOUSANDS of folk fell for his scams, including women who paid top dollar for medicine made of colored water, false fixes for STD's and more. The recent book by Pope Brock, "Charlatan" (linked on the right here) is literally one of the most incredible books I have ever read. My jaw dropped on nearly every page! Photography collectors can also collect his real photo post cards which he spread over the country like his radio broadcasts. Here is a link to a nice article by Lewis Baer from the Antique Trader which illustrates many of the RPPC images.

Brinkley Hospital Postcard by Curteich mailed from Little Rock 1944. Collection Jim Linderman

5 comments:

  1. I tried this treatment, and it really works. My goat and I have carnal relations any time we please.

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  2. Hey Jim, for some reason I'm not getting your posts through the followers mail. I happened to look at your site and realized the last one I got was on Friday. Perhaps that explains the lack of comments?

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  3. Hmmm. I dunno. I'll tinker around, but my guess is that it's the server sending things to you? Thanks for letting me know.

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  4. Okay, it's several hours later and all of the missing posts arrived in a cluster, so something happened. Perhaps it's all the end-of-the-world thunderstorms we've been having.

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