During the years of the great Depression, Dr. John Brinkley collected an estimated, astounding $10-million to $20-million from surgeries and patent medicines. He is widely regarded by critics as perpetrator of one of the most outrageous, biggest, and longest running medical frauds in U.S. history. In furthering the promotion of his cure for male sexual dysfunction, Brinkley invented a number of radio broadcasting business breakthroughs. He was much more an advertising, marketing and public relations man than a medical man. His life story is the subject of the New York Times bestselling book Charlatan by Pope Brock. This book, Making Them Believe, provides in-depth, expert analysis of Brinkley’s extraordinarily effective marketing.
“I HAVE A SCHEME up my sleeve and the whole world will soon hear of it.”
—Dr. John R. Brinkley
• John Brinkley began has career—can we call it that?—marketing medical cures in 1905.
• In 1918, Brinkley opened his first 16-room clinic in Milford, Kansas.
• By 1920, Dr. Brinkley was attracting national attention, and engaging in nationwide advertising for his goat-glands transplant surgery.
• In 1923, John Brinkley secured one of the first broadcasting licenses in the Midwest, and broke ground on his own radio station.
• In the late 1920's, Dr. Brinkley leveraged his burgeoning fame, and his control of radio programming, to create a network of more than 500 drugstore owners throughout the Midwest, to distribute Brinkley-branded medicines, and service customers driven to them by his radio program, ‘The Medical Question Box'.
• In 1930, the trade publication Radio Digest proclaimed Brinkley’s KFKB radio station the most popular station in the United States.
• In 1931, he sold KFKB under threat of having its broadcasting license rescinded by the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner to the Federal Communications Corporation, and built his new radio station in Mexico, just beyond the reach of U.S. authorities, but with the wattage to reach listeners throughout the U.S.
• In 1942, in ill health, and in financial difficulty, John Brinkley and his wife Minnie were indicted by federal prosecutors on charges of mail fraud. This, the culmination of decades of pursuit by and combat with the American Medical Association, several federal regulatory and law enforcement agencies, and numerous states’ attorney generals.
• John Brinkley died in May 1942.