{Have you heard the one about the doctor in Kansas who made a fortune peddling goat testicles to cure impotence?}<\/p>\n
This may sound like the opening line for a joke, but it’s actually the strange true tale of John Romulus Brinkley, a small-town doctor in 1900s America, whose rags-to-riches story is the subject of a funny and captivating documentary at the Sundance Film Festival.<\/p>\n
Directed by Penny Lane, “Nuts!” traces Brinkley’s unbelievable rise to fame as he comes up with a surgical method to transplant goat testicles into impotent men while living in the tiny Kansas town of Milford in 1917.<\/p>\n
“I started working on this documentary after coming across a book in the library about Brinkley called ‘Charlatan’,” Lane told AFP. “And the whole time I was reading it, I was thinking, ‘did it (his medicine) work?'”<\/p>\n
Legend has it that the transplant idea dawned on Brinkley when he was visited by a farmer named Bill Stittsworth who, gazing out the window at two copulating goats, asked the good doctor if he could do something about his “sexual weakness.”<\/p>\n
“It’s too bad I don’t have billy goat nuts,” Stittsworth tells Brinkley \u2014 as recounted in the film \u2014 before convincing him to “just put some goat nuts in me.”<\/p>\n
FAME AND FORTUNE<\/p>\n
As some of Brinkley’s “satisfied” customers begin showing off their offspring and the procedure gains popularity, he enjoys a meteoric rise to fame, amassing a fortune and a roster of celebrity clients. <\/p>\n
That’s until his dubious practices gain the attention of the medical establishment and the federal government, which goes after him and strips him of his license.<\/p>\n
Brinkley responds by getting into advertising, launching a wildly popular radio station and continuing to peddle miracle cures to his followers.<\/p>\n
He also uses his enormous wealth to dabble in politics and almost wins the governor’s race in Kansas.<\/p>\n
The documentary, which has received favorable reviews at Sundance, skillfully mixes animated reenactments, interviews and archival footage to bring Brinkley’s story to the screen.<\/p>\n
Lane said she was keen on the project because the subject was entertaining, and because it showed how easily people can be seduced, “and maybe fooled,” by quacks like Brinkley.<\/p>\n
“I wanted to make clear that we are all gullible and dumb enough to fall into it,” she said. “But if someone is telling you a story and it seems too good to be true, that’s when you should start questioning it.”<\/p>\n
She added that while some today may laugh at those who fell for the goat testicle impotence cure, there were plenty of modern-day Brinkleys walking around.<\/p>\n
“Some people, I think, would compare Donald Trump to Brinkley,” Lane said, referring to the leading Republican candidate in the US presidential race.<\/p>\n
“Brinkley’s campaign for governor annoyed the hell out of the establishment, and we find out that he wasn’t really even interested in politics,” she added.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know if that’s true about Trump but I suspect it is.” <\/p>\n
Source:Daily Nation:[Goat testicle cure for impotence? A strange tale at Sundance->http:\/\/www.nation.co.ke\/lifestyle\/travel\/Strange-tale-of-goat-testicle-doctor-at-Sundance\/-\/1950822\/3049102\/-\/u10sio\/-\/index.html]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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