Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam (Review)

This is a great option for a summer read—particularly for Kansans. Pope Brock explores the life of John R. Brinkley, a self-proclaimed physician after WWI who quickly became known as "the goat-gland doctor." Brinkley earned this moniker for his surgical procedure to transplant goat glands into humans with a promise to restore youth and vitality. Not only did he became immensely wealthy and pioneer the use of radio for marketing and politics, but he did so from Milford, Kansas after city leaders went searching for a doctor to join the community. Brinkley’s life and America’s response is like watching a drunk trying to operate a car with a sober person yelling at him from the passenger seat. Terrible numbers of Americans bought Brinkley’s chicanery, while Dr. Morris Fishbein critiqued him from the pulpit of the American Medical Association in a cat-and-mouse game that ended Brinkley's medical career and nearly thrust him to the Office of Kansas Governor in 1930.

Aside from being a fascinating look at America after WWI, there were a couple observations beyond the story I found interesting. The first was how the deaths and injuries of WWI wiped out many of the young men who would otherwise have been in their prime for reproduction and physical labor. The effect was a society ripe for gullible hope that snake oil or goat glands really would give the old and infirmed a path to restoring youth. As the U.S. emerged as a world power during Brinkley's career, I wonder how much our collective desire for maintaining youthful vigor grew out of this cultural phenomenon. Pope explores this idea on a limited basis, but the story itself prompts contemplation on why Americans tend to value youth over aged wisdom.

The second point of intrigue is looking into how Brinkley used mass communication to win his followers. Returning to the drunken analogy above, Brinkley’s professional career unfolded like a crash just waiting to happen. His procedures killed a remarkable number of people, and it eventually led to him losing his medical license and his radio station that previously won him fame and fortune. Yet his disgraceful behavior nearly won him the governor’s race through a statewide write-in campaign—a campaign he would have won but for a retroactive rule to exclude many of his ballots. You can make a strong comparison to President Trump and Twitter to show that history indeed repeats itself. As Pope observed, John R. Brinkley demonstrated that “if a man behaves outrageously enough, disgrace is impossible.” Perhaps the only observation to add is how many love to cheer for those who push outrageousness to bounds that were previously unimagined.

Despite this dour point of conclusion, Charlatan was a fun read that I recommend. Despite taking place a hundred years ago, it is timely and fresh. It is a story that is both entertaining and insightful, which is far better medicine than anything Brinkley offered during his bizarre tenure as “America’s Most Dangerous Huckster.”