John R. Brinkley

John Romulus Brinkley (later John Richard Brinkley) was born on July 8, 1885 and died on May 26, 1942. He was both a controversial medical doctor who experimented with goat glands as a means of curing male impotence and a radio pioneer who created the age of Mexican border blasters.

John Brinkley was born on July 8, 1885 near Beta, Jackson County, North Carolina, USA. He died in 1942 in San Antonio, Texas. His middle name given at birth was Romulus, but Dr. Brinkley later changed it to Richard. His parents died when he was young and he moved in with an aunt and he attended a one-room school in Tuckasiegee, although he did receive a diploma.

In 1908 John Brinkley married Sally Wike and the couple had three daughters. In 1913 he divorced and then married Minnie Telitha Jones with whom he had a son.

Education
In 1907 shortly before his first marriage, John Brinkley continued his education until 1915 with unaccredited schools including Bennett Medical College of Chicago and Eclectic Medical University of Kansas City from which he obtained an M.D. From this background John Brinkley was able to obtain a medical license from the state of Arkansas which he used to establish a medical practice in Milford, Kansas.

Goat gland career
In 1918 Dr. Brinkley began to perform operations which he claimed would restore male virility and fertility by implanting the glands of goats in his male patients at a cost of $750 per operation. He hired a press agent, advertised in newspapers, and used direct mail to promote his procedure to people who wrote asking for information.

On a trip to Los Angeles, where he was praised by the Los Angeles Times, he toured radio station KHJ, owned by the Times, and decided that radio could be a great sales tool. By 1923 he had enough capital to build KFKB (which stood for ‘’Kansas First, Kansas Best’’) using a 1 kW transmitter, as the first radio station in the state of Kansas, although there is some debate on this since a station in nearby Manhattan was licensed before this. Typical of early radio, it featured live performances by local singers and musicians, but also featured medical talks by Brinkley, including "Medical Question Box." where Brinkley would read listener medical complaints, and suggest treatments. He organized a network of affiliated pharmacies in his coverage area, and prescribed medicine by number which you could only get at the local affiliated pharmacy, who sent a portion of their profit to Brinkley.

In 1928 the business of "Doc" Brinkley came to the attention of Dr. Morris Fishbein, executive secretary of the American Medical Association, who disliked Brinkley as an "advertising doctor." The Kansas City Star, which owned a radio station that competed with Brinkley's, ran an unfavorable series of reports on him. In 1930 his medical license was revoked by the Kansas State Medical Board and the Federal Radio Commission refused to renew his station’s broadcasting license. He sued the commission, and the case Brinkley v. FRC became a landmark case in broadcast law.

Political career
Brinkley's radio license renewal was denied in 1930, and he lost his medical license in Kansas. Dr. Brinkley reacted to this double attack by campaigning for Governor of Kansas, a political position which would enable him to appoint his own members to the medical board and thus regain his medical license. His campaign was conducted as an independent write-in candidate. As a write-in candidate, he received 183,278 votes (29.5% of the vote) and lost.

Brinkley ran again in 1932 as an Independent, receiving 244,607 votes (30.6% of the vote). Because he lacked a medical license to practice in Kansas, in 1933 he moved his medical business into the Roswell Hotel in Del Rio, Texas.

Move to Del Rio, Texas
In 1931, Dr. Brinkley obtained a license from the government of Mexico to construct a 75 kW station at 840 kHz on the AM dial which was radiated by a sky wave antenna held aloft by 300-foot towers. His station at Villa Acuña, Coahuila, (since renamed Ciudad Acuña) was located on the other side of the Rio Grande from Del Rio, Texas.

Under the call sign of XER, Dr. Brinkley used his new border blaster to resume his campaign for Governor once again by using landlines to the transmitter since its sky wave signal could be heard in Kansas and as far north as Canada. This approach did not work, and he lost yet again. The same thing happened in 1934. Meanwhile Dr. Brinkley had resumed his medical practice over the airwaves. Male listeners were offered an array of expensive concoctions which included Mercurochrome injections and pills, all designed to help them regain their sexual prowess. At the clinic in the hotel he also performed prostate operations. For a short period of time, he lost his license and had to broadcast from XEPN, a "border blaster" in Piedras Negras, Coahuila.

His house, commonly called the Brinkley Mansion, still stands today in Del Rio and is considered a historical landmark.

XERA
At this time radio station WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio, was operating with an experimental AM broadcasting license with an RCA transmitter power of 500 kilowatts. It was the most powerful AM radio station ever licensed in the USA. Dr. Brinkley asked RCA to build him a similar transmitter to the one used by WLW, so that he could install it at his broadcasting site in Mexico.

The government of Mexico issued Dr. Brinkley with a license for his new station under the new call letters of XERA. Up until this time the USA had ignored protests from Mexico about the intrusion of signals from US radio stations onto the Mexican broadcasting band and XERA was a form of radio “war” by retaliation.

When XERA signed on, its huge new high-gain antenna sent its clear sky wave signals over Canada and the North Pole and into Russia. It has been claimed that the USSR tuned to XERA where the NKVD (later KGB), used the programs to train their spies in the English language.

Other American promoters became inspired by the advent of border blaster radio and many new stations were added along various points of the borders of Mexico with the United States.

Wealth
It has been claimed that between 1933 and 1938 Dr. Brinkley earned $12 million which he used to purchase diamonds, cars, aircraft, a yacht (which was reportedly rented to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor for their honeymoon) and a large mansion by which time he had decided to move his medical practice once again. This time his destination was Little Rock, Arkansas, although his home remained in Texas.

World War II
With the advent of World War II in Europe, but before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the US declaration of war, Dr. Brinkley extended his radio support to the sympathizers of Nazi Germany by giving airtime to people such as Gerald Winrod, Fritz Kuhn, and William Dudley Pelley. This aroused the ire of the American government. In April 1941, the Mexican Government made a deal with the United States to restrict renegade stations such as XERA. This put Brinkley's station out of business.

Brinkley Act
In retaliation the United States banned cross-border links between U.S. radio studios and Mexican transmitters without a U.S. license with legislation which became known as the Brinkley Act. This move was followed by U.S. recognition of Mexico's own clear channels and Mexico's agreement to regulate the border blasters and as a result the government of Mexico took control of XERA in 1939.

Death
His final years were not good. Dr. Brinkley had lost his radio station; he had also tried to win a libel suit in which he named Dr. Fishbein as defendant and lost yet again; several of his former patients sued him for malpractice; the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) declared their own war on him and he was indicted for mail fraud by the United States Postal Service. On January 31, 1941 he was forced to declare bankruptcy.

As if his financial setbacks were not enough, Dr. Brinkley then became a medical patient himself, having suffered three heart attacks and the loss of one of his legs by amputation due to a problem with poor circulation. On May 26, 1942 Dr. Brinkley died of heart failure in San Antonio, penniless and heartbroken. He was later buried in Memphis, Tennessee.

Footnote about XERA
XERA ceased to be the licensed station for Villa Acuña in 1939. For a history of the new station that was granted a license by Mexico for Ciudad Acuña at a different location, see the article about XERF.