Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam | 
 enlarge | Author: Pope Brock
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 7026
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.4
ISBN: 0307339882
Dewey Decimal Number: 615.856
EAN: 9780307339881
ASIN: 0307339882
Publication Date: February 5, 2008
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Product Description
In 1917, after years of selling worthless patent remedies throughout the Southeast, John R. Brinkley–America’s most brazen young con man–arrived in the tiny town of Milford, Kansas. He set up a medical practice and introduced an outlandish surgical method using goat glands to restore the fading virility of local farmers.
It was all nonsense, of course, but thousands of paying customers quickly turned “Dr.” Brinkley into America’s richest and most famous surgeon. His notoriety captured the attention of the great quackbuster Morris Fishbein, who vowed to put the country’s “most daring and dangerous” charlatan out of business.
Their cat-and-mouse game lasted throughout the 1920s and ’30s, but despite Fishbein’s efforts Brinkley prospered wildly. When he ran for governor of Kansas, he invented campaigning techniques still used in modern politics. Thumbing his nose at American regulators, he built the world’s most powerful radio transmitter just across the Rio Grande to offer sundry cures, and killed or maimed patients by the score, yet his warped genius produced innovations in broadcasting that endure to this day. By introducing country music and blues to the nation, Brinkley also became a seminal force in rock ’n’ roll. In short, he is the most creative criminal this country has ever produced.
Culminating in a decisive courtroom confrontation that pit Brinkley against his nemesis Fishbein, Charlatan is a marvelous portrait of a boundlessly audacious rogue on the loose in an America that was ripe for the bamboozling.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 Things haven't really changed all that much, have they? July 20, 2008
I got this book after seeing the author on C-SPAN II's "About Books", and as an amateur medical historian, decided to purchase it when the library didn't have it. It seems that all the factors came together to make John Brinkley a rich and famous (and later broken) man, and that he introduced the Western Hemisphere to some fabulous music didn't hurt his cause either.
I was completely surprised to read that the respected surgeon Max Thorek, who now has a hospital in Chicago named after him, was a participant in this scam! But unlike Brinkley, he knew what he was doing, surgically, and abandoned this project when it proved worse than useless.
His wife's story appears to be at least as interesting as his, too.
Fabullllllllllllllllous June 30, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I picked up this book after reading its 5 star review in an Audio magazine.
Every page makes you laugh at the man's marketing acumen. Its a timely books since I am dealing with such sleazes in my life right now.
I sometimes wonder how people like these can sleep in the night knowing they are coning others in broad day light.
If you want to know the mind of a scoundrel, this book is for you.
Great Read but Brinkeley was not the greatest quack May 25, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
CHARLATON by Pope Brock
A fascinating book that chronicles the rise and fall of the man who is generally considered to be the most successful quack in American history, John Brinkley, and his pursuit by Morris Fishbein, the legendary chief of the AMA.
Brock does a good job of explaining the time and characteristics of the golden age of American quackery, Brinkley began his career as a quack in the first part of the twentieth century, after working in patent medicine shows, in the Midwest, wore a Van Dyke beard and moustache, owned and a radio station which he used to promote his quackery, furnished his mansion with an assortment of bizarre and ostentatious souvenirs, and was an anti-Semite.
Brinkley, who had no medical degree, nevertheless became a licensed physician and surgeon in 12 states and surgically implanted goat testes into patients, at $750 a pop, and sold worthless and often even harmful medicines, which he prescribed over the radian, at drugstores that advertised his products and then paid Brinkley a commission on every medicine sold. His average annual income, in the middle of the depression, was $12 million a year, compared to the average MD GP who was earning about $3500 at that time.
Fishbein, aided by the famous editor and social critic H.L.Mencken, who led a crusade against quackery for more than 30 years, first as the editor of JAMA and the as the chief of the AMA, eventually cornered and exposed Brinkley in 1939, who died soon after.
All-in-all, Charlatan is a great read that most people will enjoy immensely although there are several points that the author makes that I think should have been developed more. First, although Brock alludes briefly to this, Fishbein considered not just Brinkely, BJ, and other obvious frauds as quacks, but also optometrists, podiatrists, DOs most of whom were received medical training comparable to MDs, and even opposed nurse midwives and nurse anesthesiologists. He was a social and political reactionary who was as passionately opposed to group medical practice by MDs as he was to any medical practice by anyone other than an MD, including quacks.
Secondly, John Brinkley was not America's most successful quack. Brinkley was an imposter. The most "successful" quack in American history by any standard was BJ Palmer.the "developer" of chirpractic, which Brock acknowledges caused the death of Eugene V. Debs and undoubtedly many, many others over the past 110 years since it's "discovery". Palmer, like Brinkeley, began his career as a quack in the first part of the twentieth century, after working in patent medicine shows in the Midwest, also wore a Van Dyke beard and moustache, also owned and a radio station which he used to promote his quackery, also furnished his mansion with an assortment of bizarre and ostentatious souvenirs, and also was an anti-Semite.
The chiropractic quack cult is declining but it is still defrauding hundreds of thousands of patients, public and private insurance, and thousands students, out of tens of millions of dollars a year. BJ Palmer was without question the most successful quack in American history.
 The demise of "Quacks" and the rise of the The A.M.A. May 19, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
With 20 pages of notes, it is evident that the author has a great story to relate of a not too long ago history of medical quacks with absurd promises of renewed health and restored youth. The story of the book's "Charlatan" is complete with all of the gory details. I enjoyed reading it thinking that the "era" has ended, but has it really? I found the story of Dr. Morris Fishbein and the somewhat difficult development of the A.M.A. to be of a redeeming second story of the book. The details of Del Rio becoming "Hillbilly Heaven" along with other unbeliveable, in this generation, stories of greed and gullibility was enjoyable reading. Alas, reading of the great fortunes and mansions being built today, there are, no doubt, "charlatans" out there by other names.
Goat gland doctor from Kansas May 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I purchased this book on a colleagues recommendation and read it on a trip t o Brazil. I could hardly put it down. The author writes in an extrememly amusing way of a little known chapter in the history of the US in the early part of the 20th century. It is hard to believe that such recent history has so little to do with modern medicine.
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