BBC News World Central Editorial Team |
One night in January 1917, a farmer, worried about his libido, visited a doctor in a small town in Kansas, United States.
He hadn’t had an erection in a long time, he confided: “It’s like a flat tire.”
“I’ve been to a lot of doctors and spent a lot of money, and none of them have done me any good.”
“I have had many cases like yours,” the doctor replied. «I have used serums, medicines and electricity for sexually weak men. “I don’t think I have benefited any patients with any of them.”
“Medical science knows nothing that can really help a condition like yours,” he said.
Looking out the window, he saw some goats and made a comment on the air: “You wouldn’t have that problem if you were a goat.”
«If I had the testicles of a goat? “Put them on me!” exclaimed the farmer.
“It could kill you,” the doctor warned him.
“But it’s worth the risk,” was the farmer’s response.
This is a version of the conversation.
There are others, with more details, several difficult to confirm because this is a story with traces of legend. But as incredible as it may seem to you, it is real.
And it is recounted, not only because it is peculiar, but also because it illustrates how hungry for nostrums people can be, and how difficult it is to control quacks.
The protagonist
John R. Brinkley, the doctor, had not been seeing patients for much more than two weeks in the pharmacy where the farmer consulted him.
He had arrived after seeing an advertisement that said: “Milford, Kansas, population 2,000. “We need a doctor.”
When he went to explore the possibility, he discovered a typo: the population was actually 200.
It was an unattractive town, in which there were no paved roads, there was not even traffic, nor water, sewage or electricity systems.
But Brinkley had just $23 and a lot of debt.
He also had a wife, Minnie Telitha, who burst into tears when he told her they were moving to Milford.
What I didn’t have was much experience in the health field, and what I did have was episodic and not very orthodox.
It boiled down to a medical show he put on with his first wife when he was 22, in which they sold potions amidst singing and dancing.
Aside from that, he started a business in 1913 with a partner in Greenville, South Carolina, treating men with male stamina problems.
It lasted two months and they ended up in jail for practicing medicine without a license and paying with fake checks. And, a couple of years later, he worked briefly as one of the doctors at a meat packing plant, and was dazzled by the vigorous mating activities of goats destined for slaughter.
However, from a young age, Brinkley wanted to be a doctor, and whenever he could he enrolled in universities trying to complete his degree.
So, by the time he arrived in Milford, he had a medical degree that, despite its dubious origin, allowed him to practice in 8 states.
He soon earned a reputation for his care of those affected by the virulent and deadly flu pandemic of 1917-1918.
But, with that visit from the farmer, his practice began to turn in an increasingly surprising direction.
Let’s go back to that night and that conversation.
Open secret
The mention of goat testicles had given the helpless farmer hope.
At the time, the idea of xenotransplantation – taking organs or pieces from other animals and putting them into humans for therapeutic purposes – was not new and generated considerable interest among mainstream doctors.
But to conceive something like that so lightly was absurd. However, a while later the two men already had a detailed plan. They agreed that the operation would be done in secret.
The farmer would bring the goat in at night, under the cover of darkness, and return home before dawn.
His wife would call the doctor the next morning to tell him that her husband had the flu, which would give the doctor a legitimate excuse to keep an eye on her convalescence from the unique surgical procedure.
According to a biography of Brinkley – which he is believed to have commissioned – two weeks later the farmer visited the doctor again, but this time to give him a check for US$150.
He was so pleased with the result, he said, that “if I could I would have paid him 10 times as much,” wrote “The Life of a Man” author Clement Wood in 1937.
Despite all precautions, gossip spread and, again under strict secrecy, another man came to ask Brinkley for the same procedure.
His name was William Stittsworth and he was so pleased with the results that a month later he took his wife to have a goat ovary transplanted.
Sexual dysfunction plagued those who suffered from it, and Brinkley offered a fountain of youth.
Many more came after her and, with apparently widespread positive results, he amassed a fortune.
His business grew further with the backing of prominent figures, such as JJ Tobias, chancellor of the University of Chicago Law School.
