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People Tried Unworkable Methods to Ward off Illness Outbreaks in History

Khalid Elhassan March 31, 2020 33 min

Physician - Goat gland — Brinkley's hospital operating room. Imgur

5. End of the Road for the Goat Gonads Guru

John R. Brinkley during his run for governor. Fountain City Frequency

Brinkley launched his campaign for governor just three days after losing his medical license. He ran on a vague platform of public works, lower taxes, higher old-age pensions, and education. Despite being a near last-minute write-in candidate, Brinkley got almost 30% of the vote.

He would have won, but the state’s Attorney General intervened at the last minute to change the rules for write-in votes: only those writing Brinkley’s name as “J. R. Brinkley” would have their votes counted. That disqualified 50,000 Brinkley ballots, which would put have put him over the top had they been counted. Brinkley ran again in 1932, but lost. He then faded away, pursued by numerous medical malpractice and wrongful death lawsuits. By the time John R. Brinkley died in 1942, he was bankrupt.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.