The Goat-Gland Doctor

Quoting from Wikipedia: "John Romulus Brinkley (later John Richard Brinkley; July 8, 1885 – May 26, 1942) was a controversial American who fraudulently claimed to be amedical doctor (he had no legitimate medical education and bought his medical degree from a "diploma mill") who became known as the "goat-gland doctor" after he achieved national fame, international notoriety and great wealth through the xenotransplantation of goat testicles into humans."

But wait! The story doesn't end there. Mr.Brinkley's father was a "poor mountain man" who served as a medic in the Civil War on the Confederate side. After his first marriage was annulled because he was underage (which, in 1860's North Carolina, he must have been, like, 5 year old) he married and outlived 4 more "young, pretty wives" (Wikipedia again) but this is where it gets really interesting...

"In 1870, at the age of 42, [Brinkley's father, also named John Brinkley] married Sarah T. Mingus. Later, the 24-year-old niece of Mingus moved into the house: Sarah Candice Burnett...Sarah Burnett gave birth out of wedlock to John Romulus Brinkley in the town of Beta, in Jackson County, North Carolina, naming her son after his father, and after Romulus, the mythical twin suckled by wolves.^[1] Sarah Burnett died of pneumonia and tuberculosis when Brinkley was five."

This is where the story of our hero begins. Born to the niece of Papa Goat-Doctor's wife in 1885 there was nowhere to go for young John Romulus "Named-after-the-mythical-founder-of-Rome-but-actually-just-the-child-of-a-Confederate-mountain-man-and-his-niece-in-law" Brinkley but up.

Without telling too much his life can be summarized in a few buzz-words: Diploma mill, con-artist, bigamist, prison, actual sortof-okay doctor, and finally, Goat testicles.

Brinkley began fixing men who were "sexually weak" by transplanting goat testicles into their nether regions, summarized on Wikipedia thusly, "At his clinic, Brinkley began to perform more operations he claimed would restore male virility and fertility through implanting the testicular glands of goats in his male patients at a cost of $750 per operation^[17] ($8,900 in current value). Following one of his crude operations, the body of a patient would typically absorb the goat gonads as foreign matter. The organs were never accepted as part of the body since they were simply placed into the human male testicle sac or the abdomen of women, near the ovaries. Unsurprisingly, in light of his questionable medical training (75 percent completion at a less-than-reputable medical school), frequency of operating while intoxicated and less-than sterile operating environments, some patients suffered from infection, and an undetermined number died. Brinkley would be sued more than a dozen times for wrongful death between 1930 and 1941"

Though he died penniless and forever known as "The Goat-Gland Doctor" his life is an eerily similar mixture of Orson Welles' actual life with that of the character Citizen Kane, with just a tad more goat testicles. Dr. Goat testes ran for governor of Kansas, had his own radio station, and even got a real medical license, which was later officially revoked by Benito Mussolini, although Brinkley ignored this and kept on claiming to have an Italian medical license because A) you could do that in the 1930's and B) when you are the goat-testicle man your boldness knows no bounds.

(Sidenote: I started writing this before midnight right before I was about to go to sleep when a fly attacked me. Maliciously. Multiple high-speed flights directly into my face. It took about 2 hours but eventually I killed it and one other innocent fly that I mistook for my assailant. I believe this attack was in retaliation to a mercy-killing of a wounded fly a few days ago which was apparently mistaken as an act of war against all of fly-kind. If I live through the night they have not yet organized to such an extent as to be able to kill a human while they sleep. If I don't make it....may God help us all.)

P.S. FUCK THIS FORMATTING IT'S TERRIBLE AND I CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS SHIT AT 3 A.M. FUCK YOU BLOGSPOT THIS IS WHY I COULD NEVER ACTUALLY BE A BLOGGER