Charlatan

Perhaps the most striking fact about Brock's account of twenties' and thirties' hucksterism--and, specifically, the ultimate "snake oil salesman," John R. Brinkley--is its revelation that the obsession with virility fueling the popularity of such modern-day chemical enhancers as steroids and Viagra is nothing new. As Brock makes clear, most of the fraudulent "remedies" that "flimflam men" like Brinkley promoted were hyped as cures for impotency. Johnny Heller's twangy voice resonates with the expansive openness of the Midwestern environs where the book takes place and with just the right plaintive nasality when he's mimicking Brinkley himself. Brinkley's roly-poly nemesis, Morris Fishbein, was an equally colorful figure from the turbulent era between the two World Wars. Classic Americana. J.S.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

November 19, 2007
John Brinkley, who grew up poor in rural North Carolina but attended Rush Medical College in Chicago, got his start touring as a medicine man hawking “miracle” tonics and became famous for transplanting goat testicles into impotent men. Brinkley built his own radio station in 1923, hustling his pseudoscience over the airwaves and giving an outlet to astrologers and country music. His nemesis was Dr. Morris Fishbein, the buoyant, compulsively curious editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association
whose luminary friends included Sinclair Lewis, Clarence Darrow and H.L. Mencken. Fishbein took aim at Brinkley in JAMA
, lay publications and pamphlets distributed by the thousands. Even after the Kansas State Medical Board yanked his medical license in 1930, Brinkley ran twice for governor of Kansas and almost won. Finally, Brinkley sued Fishbein for libel and lost in a spectacular showdown. Brock (Indiana Gothic
) did tremendous research on this rollicking story, but the result is at times unfocused, overwritten and digressive, borrowing just a little too much from the overblown rhetoric of its subject. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW
.