John R. Brinkley
From RationalWiki
John R. Brinkley was a "medical doctor" quack practitioner from Kansas in the 1920s best known for promoting his therapy, transplanting goat glands to cure impotence.
We aren't kidding. Goat testicles.
[edit] Poor lil' goats
He was a "medical doctor" because he had a medical diploma from the Eclectic Medical University of Kansas City, a notorious diploma mill whose mail-order degrees nonetheless gave him the right to practice medicine in a few states at the time including Kansas. In any case, he set up a radio station to promote his goat therapy, where he also pioneered the practice of issuing prescriptions over the air to his listeners without any diagnosis (later popular on the Internet for obtaining Viagra).
The Federal Radio Commission (forerunner of the Federal Communication Commission) shut his radio station down in 1930 for promoting fraud and his license to practice medicine was revoked the same year by the state of Kansas because 43 deaths were attributed to his goat transplants. Undaunted, he moved his radio station to Mexico where he beamed his goat testicle transplant advertisements into the United States at 100,000 watts.
[edit] What's the matter with Kansas?
In 1930 he ran for governor of Kansas as an independent and almost won in a 3-way race (29.5% of the vote). He ran again as an independent in 1932 and almost won again with 30.6% of the vote. Unable to become governor of Kansas and stack the medical board with his own appointees, he moved his practice to Texas in 1933.
[edit] On-a Mexican-whoa-whoa, radio
Meanwhile, his Mexican radio station started advertising a new therapy, mercurochrome injections and pills to cure impotence. (Mercurochrome is a topical antiseptic that contains mercury, a cumulative heavy metal pollutant and neurotoxin, now banned in the USA by the United States Food and Drug Administration even as a topical antiseptic.)
In 1941 as World War II was getting underway, the Mexican government shut down his radio station for giving airtime to Axis sympathizers like Gerald Winrod and William Dudley Pelley, and he was out of business for good.
