I recently found another photograph of Good Doctor Gonad...one of my favorite scoundrels of the past. Several books about him are linked at right. I wrote about the crook in a previous post, his gambit was inserting sheep glands into depression era men (apparently even one vice-president) in order to jump-start their waning libidos. Basically a medicine show fraud grown rich and powerful, his greatest accomplishment (other than ripping off "softies" way before the invention of Viagra) was the radio station he set up over the border in Mexico to avoid the scarce few government regulators around at the time. Yes, surprisingly, there used to be corporate shysters who would take advantage of the good folk of the country. A typical useless goat gland insertion would set a rural farmer back about $750...(think Bob Dole, except that the farmers were suffering ED at a time when there was no "magic bullet" which encouraged the engorging of spongy tissue) He also killed a few farmers and stole millions...and if it weren't for the American Medical Association and a few consumer rights advocates, his heirs would be still.
A brief aside and fun fact. Brinkley's border radio station played the Carter Family. They would record their "sunny side" songs onto giant transcription records, WAY larger than standard long-players...and mail them down so Doctor Sheep Noogies could pretend they were "live in the studio" in between his sleazy, unregulated pitches for his bogus cures. Years later, when researchers went looking for these precious discs to reissue them, it was found many were tossed out back the studio and the poor folks of Ciudad Acuna, right across the river from Del Rio, Texas, had used them as roofing tiles.
"Doctor" J. R. Brinkley original press photograph, 1934 Collection Jim Linderman
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