{"id":465,"date":"2017-07-15T08:33:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-02T20:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drmirkin.com\/2017\/07\/15\/john-brinkley-goat-testicle-entrepreneur\/"},"modified":"2017-07-15T08:33:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-02T20:33:54","slug":"john-brinkley-goat-testicle-entrepreneur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=465","title":{"rendered":"John Brinkley, Goat Testicle Entrepreneur"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\"johnMedical fraud is as rampant today as it has always been, but John Brinkley was among the greatest medical frauds of all time. From the 1920s onward, between World War I and World War II, he became fabulously wealthy by surgically implanting the testicles of goats into the scrotums of men to "cure" impotence and into the bellies of women "so they could become pregnant."  He charged $750 per operation (equal to about $20,000 today).  Then as now, doctors  knew that transplanting living tissue from animals, or even humans, into another human causes an immune reaction that soon destroys the transplanted tissue.  Its breakdown products are quickly removed from the body.  When a person receives transplanted tissue, he must be given powerful drugs to suppress his immunity so he will not kill that transplant.<\/div>\n
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\n\tToday, millions of American men whose bodies produce adequate amounts of testosterone risk their health by taking prescription hormones that can increase risk for heart attacks, and use their money on over-the-counter pills that they think will cure impotence, make them more sexual and give them larger muscles.  You cannot legally buy any pill that has been proven to treat or cure impotence or raise testosterone without a prescription. Foods such as oysters, clams, asparagus, eggs and caviar do nothing to increase sexual potency.<\/div>\n
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\n\tMedical Qualifications<\/strong><\/div>\n
\n\t“Dr.” John R. Brinkley never received a legitimate medical degree.  He was born in 1885 in the hills of North Carolina and his first exposure to the practice of medicine came from the fact that he was the illegitimate son of a man who was a medic in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.  They lived in abject poverty. His mother died of pneumonia when he was five and his father died when he was ten. He attended a one-room log cabin primary school.<\/div>\n
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\n\tHe went to several unaccredited medical schools, but was not graduated from any of them partly because of his failure to pay the required tuitions.  In his late twenties, he opened a medical practice without a license to practice medicine in Greenville, South Carolina and advertised that he could give injections to increase a man's sexual prowess and desire.  He charged $25 a shot (equal to $600 today) and had to leave town abruptly two months later.  The local newspaper reported that he left town owing unpaid bills to more than 30 merchants.  He showed up in Knoxville, Tennessee where he was arrested and sent back to Greenville for practicing medicine without a license and defrauding the local merchants.  <\/div>\n
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\n\tIn 1914 at age 29, he moved to Kansas City where he finished his last year of medical school at Eclectic Medical University which had so many curriculum deficiencies that it was approved as a medical school in only eight states. In 1917 at age 32 and during World War I, he enlisted in the army, but two months later he was back on the streets because of a "nervous breakdown". <\/div>\n
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