Review
A fake doctor who slices off goat testicles and inserts them
into the scrotums of men looking to restore their desiccated virility? A fake
doctor who grows fabulously wealthy from the hordes lined up outside his door,
despite the fact that his surgery causes blood poisoning, loss of limbs, and
even death? Preposterous! If
Charlatan were a novel, it would be a
satire. If it were a play, it would be a farce. But it is history, and we must
ruefully own up to it as our legacy. If we try to tell ourselves that nowadays
we are far too enlightened to succumb to such quackery, we are as fraudulent as
the "surgical swami" himself. After all, how different are Botox injections, the
same toxin that causes botulism, from goat glands? John Brinkley's story
promises to tell us much about the modern confection of advanced knowingness and
undaunted gullibility, not to...
Beyond the Book
Quack Medicine
In the nineteenth century, when even mainstream medical therapies included
painful bloodletting and leeching, quack* medicine didn't seem quite so quacky.
If you wanted your hair to grow, you could don a Thermocap to send just the
right amount of heat to your follicles. If your eyes were weak, you could apply
the Neu-Vita Oculizer to massage your muscles and improve your eyesight. If you
had a "female complaint"—code for an unwanted pregnancy—you could down a tonic
containing pennyroyal. If your problem was onanism, you could submit to a
bracing ice water bath each night from a belt that circulated tubes between your
legs. If, on the other hand, your problem was blocked sexual energy, you could
purchase vibrators...
