Sundance enjoys tale of dubious goat testicle doctor
Print Edition
Have you heard the one about the doctor in Kansas who made a fortune peddling goat testicles to cure impotence?
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.
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.
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 doctor if he could do something about his “sexual weakness.”
“It’s too bad I don’t have billy goat nuts,” Stittsworth tells Brinkley — as recounted in the film — before convincing him to “just put some goat nuts in me.”
As the procedure gains popularity, he enjoys a meteoric rise to fame, amassing a fortune and a roster of celebrity clients.
That is until the federal government takes note and strips him of his license.
Brinkley responds by getting into advertising, launching a wildly popular radio station and continuing to peddle miracle cures to his followers. He also uses his enormous wealth to dabble in politics and almost wins the governor’s race in Kansas.
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