In each case Dr. Brinkley had used male goat glands—and all the babies were boys.
Then this occurred to him:—
“If I transplant female goat glands maybe the babies will be girls!” He decided to try it, and two months ago his opportunity arrived. A woman came to him just as his first woman patient had come. She was 28 years old, had been married six years, and was childless. Dr. Brinkley performed the operation, using the glands of a female goat. He is now awaiting results. “I do not say this woman will have a girl baby,” said Dr. Brinkley today, “but I am experimenting. It may be merely a coincidence that all the babies so far have been boys. So far as I know, I am the first surgeon to experiment with gland implantation in women. I am also the first to use goat glands in preference to others.
“Unquestionably I have cured sterility in one woman, and I have utmost faith that it can be cured in any other, so long as all of her organs are not missing. The operation is a little more difficult than it is in the case of men, but no more serious. Where a man recovers, and can get about, in two or three days, a woman recovers in a week.
“All of my patients are much improved in their general health as a result of the operation. I wouldn’t say that this operation holds the secret of eternal youth. I don’t know. All my patients have been between the ages of 32 and 48, so that I cannot speak from experience. I believe, however, that the operation will prolong life; I know that it improves the health in every way. But I cannot say that it will restore the bloom of youth to an old man’s cheek. I am considering, however, an operation upon a man 80 years old who came to me and asked for the operation. Whether he would be able to have children as a result of it I do not know.”
None of Dr. Brinkley’s patients had been parents until they came to him. Now the oldest of the babies is 13 months; another is 8 months and a third is 6. Dr. Brinkley does not claim to be a specialist in gland implantation; he is merely a practicing surgeon who has made a study of the subject and is doing what he can to help unfortunate people. The doctor’s modesty until now has hidden his remarkable discovery from the world, but he is now writing a report on his results.
(From the San Diego, Cal., Union, of date, February 7, 1920.)
Scientists who formerly ignored Dr. Brinkley’s letters are now writing to him asking him for exhaustive reports of his work. The sarcastic attitude came largely heretofore from those who were unwilling to believe that such operations of the highest scientific importance, were being performed in an out of the way village that couldn’t be found on a railway map.
Dr. Brinkley, who was graduated from the Medical Department of Loyola University, and who has traveled over all the world, explained his residence in Milford. After leaving the army he sought a location in a small town, selecting Milford as the result of a newspaper advertisement, and going there, found it to consist of less than 200 inhabitants. But the surrounding territory was rich and the farmers prosperous, and in the isolated location he saw the chance of continuing experiments begun at Bellevue Hospital, New York. Later he found himself compelled to build his own hospital to care for the patients that arrived, attracted by the news of the goat-gland operations. Dr. Brinkley is 35 years old and has been a skilled surgeon for more than 15 years. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Medical Association, the Missouri Valley Medical Association, the Kansas Medical Association, and a Fellow of the Clinical Congress of Internal Medicine. He is also a 32nd Degree Mason.
In the treatment of pneumonia and influenza Dr. Brinkley uses serums of his own invention. In the treatment of his cases of influenza last year the reports of the health authorities of Geary County, Kansas, show that Dr. Brinkley didn’t lose a single case. Milford is in Geary County, and Geary County swears by Dr. Brinkley.