Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam
Charlatan: America’s Most Perilous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam Books
- ISBN13: 9780307339898
- Shape up: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
“An extraordinary saga of the most perilous quack of all time…entrancing” –USA Today
In 1917, John R. Brinkley–America’s most brazen con man–introduced an outlandish surgical method for restoring fading male virility.
It was all nonsense, but thousands of keen customers quickly made “Dr.” Brinkley one of America’s richest men–and a national celebrity. The fantastic quack buster Morris Fishbein vowed to place the people’s “most daring and perilous” charlatan out of business, yet each effort seemed only to spur Brinkley to new heights of ingenuity, and the worlds of advertising, broadcasting, and politics soon proved to be equally fertile grounds for his potent brand of flimflam.
Culminating in a decisive courtroom confrontation, Charlatan is a marvelous portrait of a boundlessly audacious rogue on the loose in an America ripe for the bamboozling.
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In spite of the fact that this book has received rave reviews and has been compared favorably to “Devil in the White City,” I found it to be disappointing. Even as the theme matter was of interest to me since I have a medical background, the actual tale was tedious in its details and neither of the main characters was particularly likeable.
Sorry, readers!
Rating: 2 / 5
A book. Charlatan
The theme matter is not for the faint in heart.
He was a real nut case.
We knew about his radio station from a song we used to hear on
The Midnight Unique on new Year’s Eve.
Rating: 3 / 5
the text of this may possibly have been cut in half…to some extent intricate tale, should also have outlined in more detail actual mainstream medical treatments during that era, as one is left with the impression that medical care was predominated by quacks at that time..
Rating: 3 / 5
CHARLATON by Pope Brock
A fascinating book that chronicles the rise and fall of the man who is generally considered to be the most successful quack in American history, John Brinkley, and his pursuit by Morris Fishbein, the legendary chief of the AMA.
Brock does a excellent job of explaining the time and characteristics of the golden age of American quackery, Brinkley started his career as a quack in the first part of the twentieth century, after working in patent medicine shows, in the Midwest, wore a Van Dyke beard and moustache, owned and a radio station which he used to promote his quackery, furnished his hall with an collection of bizarre and ostentatious souvenirs, and was an anti-Semite.
Brinkley, who had no medical degree, nevertheless became a licensed physician and general practitioner in 12 states and surgically implanted goat testes into patients, at $750 a pop, and sold worthless and often even harmful medicines, which he prescribed over the radian, at drugstores that advertised his products and then paid Brinkley a commission on every medicine sold. His average annual income, in the middle of the depression, was $12 million a year, compared to the average MD GP who was earning about $3500 at that time.
Fishbein, aided by the well-known editor and social critic H.L.Mencken, who led a crusade hostile to quackery for more than 30 years, first as the editor of JAMA and the as the chief of the AMA, eventually cornered and exposed Brinkley in 1939, who died soon after.
All-in-all, Charlatan is a fantastic read that most people will delight in immensely although there are several points that the author makes that I reckon should have been developed more. First, although Brock alludes briefly to this, Fishbein considered not just Brinkely, BJ, and other evident frauds as quacks, but also optometrists, podiatrists, DOs most of whom were received medical training comparable to MDs, and even different nurse midwives and nurse anesthesiologists. He was a social and political reactionary who was as passionately different to group medical do by MDs as he was to any medical do by anyone other than an MD, including quacks.
Secondly, John Brinkley was not America’s most successful quack. Brinkley was an imposter. The most “successful” quack in American history by any standard was BJ Palmer.the “developer” of chirpractic, which Brock acknowledges caused the death of Eugene V. Debs and undoubtedly many, many others over the past 110 years since it’s “discovery”. Palmer, like Brinkeley, started his career as a quack in the first part of the twentieth century, after working in patent medicine shows in the Midwest, also wore a Van Dyke beard and moustache, also owned and a radio station which he used to promote his quackery, also furnished his hall with an collection of bizarre and ostentatious souvenirs, and also was an anti-Semite.
The chiropractic quack cult is declining but it is still defrauding hundreds of thousands of patients, broadcast and private insurance, and thousands students, out of tens of millions of dollars a year. BJ Palmer was without question the most successful quack in American history.
Rating: 5 / 5
I picked up this book after reading its 5 star review in an Audio magazine.
Every page makes you laugh at the man’s marketing acumen. Its a timely books since I am dealing with such sleazes in my life aptly now.
I sometimes wonder how people like these can sleep in the night knowing they are coning others in broad day light.
If you want to know the mind of a scoundrel, this book is for you.
Rating: 5 / 5