We read rumors that Huey Long made an appointment to get goat glands but was assassinated in 1935 before he got them, so we didn’t invent the idea of Long being associated with Brinkley in some way. However, we’ve never seen any reference to his actually having done so, so we’re stretching here to make it seem like Brinkley had some famous patients vouching for him. Why? Because the “celebrity endorsement” is a key trick used by quacks; Brinkley did it, and we’re doing it too. (See also: note 161 on another Huey Long connection.)

Rumors exist that Brinkley was William Jennings Bryan’s wife’s doctor for a time. So, this is another intentional distortion to create a “celebrity endorsement.”

We wanted the name of a famous movie star here, because we heard rumors that Brinkley had operated on some “movie stars” in 1922. We picked Valentino because he was a sex symbol and we thought a contemporary audience might have heard of him.

Brinkley himself said that he “could” cure President Wilson. He never said he did.

To claim that “everyone knew that Buster Keaton was no stranger to the power of goat glands” is pretty sneaky in the context of this sequence of celebrity endorsements. We’ve never read anywhere that Buster Keaton had the procedure or had anything at all to say about it. However, the fact that Keaton included this gag shows how well-known the goat gland cure was by 1922!