“Charlatan”
January 1, 2012 in American History, Biography, Biological Science, Crime, History, Medical Science, Modern History, Political, Science
Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock is an engaging historical tale about medical quackery from the early 20th century. I enjoyed the brief mention this story had received in Mary Roach’s Bonk, but it was great to read the whole tale.
The book follows one of America’s greatest con artists, John Brinkley, and his arch-nemesis Dr. Morris Fishbein. Fishbein, whose pet project was debunking medical quackery, worked tirelessly to expose Brinkley for what he was. The book is equally about Fishbein as it is about Brinkley, but the con artist’s tale really steals the show.
John Brinkley was a con-man from a poor background who purchased medical degrees and made his way around the country posing as a doctor selling ridiculous treatments to gullible people. He became famous for one procedure in particular: transplanting goat testicles into healthy adult men in an attempt to increase their virility. Despite having no medical training, minimal grasp on sanitation, and leaving a wake of sick, crippled and unhappy patients, Brinkley earned millions.
Brinkley was a true charlatan, charismatic and wildly popular. He was rich, famous and respected. He ran for political office several times, losing only narrowly to his opponents. When he was chased from state to state by medical licensing boards, Fishbein, and eventually the law, he set up shop in Mexico just south of the Texan border so he could broadcast his crazy medical ideas across the border without repercussion. His border blaster radio station remained hugely popular despite his controversial medical beliefs and brushes with the law, and made him somewhat of a pioneer in radio.
Eventually the hammer was brought down on Brinkley as he lost multiple lawsuits for his medical misadventures, depleting his millions and forcing him to declare bankruptcy. And in addition to his conviction of various medical frauds, he was also investigated for both tax fraud and mail fraud – a swindler in every sense of the word.
From a modern standpoint, Brinkley was such an absurd person with ideas that were so blatantly ridiculous that is almost difficult to grasp this as a non-fiction book. Yet even today, we can see the fervor for his cures still going strong in today’s popular “alternative medicine.”
The book is illuminating, fascinating, amusing and fast paced, and an all-around good read.
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The Great Influenza by John M. Barry is a fascinating look at the influenza pandemic that rocked the world in 1918. This terrifying virus killed between 3-6% of the world’s population between June 1918 and December 1920, and infected almost 30%. It is a history book, but it is heavy in the science. It is a thoroughly detailed book, providing information and statistics from around the globe during the outbreak, although the book gives the most time to those in the United States.
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I’m going to break my standard format here and talk about two books in the same entry: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? They are both collections of autobiographical stories and accounts from famed physicist Richard Feynman’s life. I’m combining discussion of these because they are both very similar books and fit well together in a single entry.
If you read accounts from his students, you will hear about what a fabulous teacher he was. Person after person after person says the same things about him: he was so excited about the topic that it made you excited, too. He was inspiring. He made even the most complex things understandable and was well renowned for this ability. He told fabulous stories. He was a great man.
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I found The Wolf: How One German Raider Terrorized the Allies in the Most Epic Voyage of WWI (by Richard Guilliatt & Peter Hohnen) pretty worthy of the attention it received last year on various book lists.
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