Brinkley operated clinics and hospitals in several states and was able to continue practicing medicine for almost two decades, despite his techniques being thoroughly discredited by the broader medical community.

At the height of his career, he had amassed millions of dollars, but he died nearly penniless as a result of the large number of malpractice, wrongful death, and fraud suits brought against him.

[10][11] Brinkley worked for Western Union as a telegrapher at night and attended classes during the day, while debts mounted from tuition, the cost of raising a family, and from Sally's self-centered whims.

[12] After two years of studies, and ever-deeper debts, Brinkley doubled his summer workload by taking two shifts at Western Union, but came home one day to find his wife and daughter gone.

[13] Minnie and John Brinkley moved to Judsonia, Arkansas, where he again obtained an "undergraduate license" to practice medicine, advertising his specialty as "diseases of women and children".

[15][13] While in Kansas City, Brinkley took a job as the doctor for the Swift and Company plant, patching minor wounds and studying animal physiology.

[19] As recounted in the biography that Brinkley had commissioned, he struck upon the idea of transplanting goat testicles into men when a patient came to him to ask if he could fix someone who was "sexually weak".

[21] Soon after Brinkley opened up shop, he scored an advertising coup that made major newspapers come calling: the wife of his first goat gland transplantation patient gave birth to a baby boy.

[22] He started a direct mail blitz and hired an advertising agent, who helped Brinkley portray his treatments as turning hapless men into "the ram that am with every lamb".

From then on, Brinkley was on the AMA's radar, including catching the eye of the doctor who would eventually be responsible for his downfall, Morris Fishbein, who made his career exposing medical frauds.

[25] California didn't recognize Brinkley's license to practice medicine from the Eclectic Medical University, but Chandler pulled some strings and got him a 30-day permit.

[16][29] That same year, the St. Louis Star published a scathing expose of medical diploma mills, and in 1924, the Kansas City Journal-Post followed suit, bringing unwelcome attention Brinkley's way.

In July 1924, a grand jury in San Francisco handed down 19 indictments to people responsible for conferring fake medical degrees, and for some doctors who received them.

[32] The advertising boost his radio station gave him was enormous, and Milford benefited as well; Brinkley paid for a new sewage system and sidewalks, installed electricity, built a bandstand and apartments for his patients and employees, as well as a new post office to handle all of his mail.

[46] His prospects for success in Kansas destroyed, Brinkley sold KFKB to an insurance company and decided to move closer to the Mexican border, where he could operate a high-power radio station with impunity.

Several months later, Brinkley was allowed to increase to one million watts, "making XER far and away the most powerful radio station on the planet" that, on a clear night, could be heard as far away as Canada.

According to accounts of the time, the signal was so strong that it turned on car headlights, made bedsprings hum, and caused broadcasts to bleed into telephone conversations.

Male listeners were offered an array of expensive concoctions which included Mercurochrome injections and pills, all designed to help them regain their sexual prowess.

He also began selling airtime to other advertisers (at $1,700 an hour, equivalent to $31,000 in 2023), giving rise to new hucksters shilling products such as "Crazy Water Crystals", "genuine simulated" diamonds, life insurance, and an array of religious paraphernalia, including what was purported to be autographed pictures of Jesus Christ.

[55] When the FRC banned what they called "spooks" (mind readers, fortune-tellers and other mystics) from broadcasting on U.S. radio in 1932, many of them followed Brinkley's model, opening their own border blasters in Mexico.

Around this time, Brinkley decided to sever the rest of his ties to Kansas, closing down his hospital there and opening a new one in Del Rio, which took up three floors of the Roswell Hotel, where he lived with his wife.

Soldiers from the Mexican army arrived at the station's doorstep to shut him down, and for a time he had to broadcast from nearby XEPN, located in Piedras Negras, Coahuila.

[58] His business, fueled by radio advertisements and speeches, continued to thrive, and he opened another clinic in San Juan, Texas, specializing in the colon.

Brinkley boasted a stable of a dozen Cadillacs, a greenhouse, a foaming fountain garden surrounded by 8,000 bushes, exotic animals imported from the Galapagos Islands, and a swimming pool with a 10-foot (3.0 m) diving tower.

When Del Rio's city elders refused to put the competitor out of business, Brinkley closed up shop and reopened in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas, with another hospital at what is now Marylake Monastery.

He declared bankruptcy in 1941, the same year implementation of the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement provided an avenue for the United States to get Mexico to shut down XERA.

Soon after his bankruptcy, the U.S. Post Office Department began investigating him for mail fraud, and Brinkley became a patient himself, having suffered three heart attacks and the amputation of one of his legs due to poor circulation.

[65] In early 2017, the bronze winged angel atop his grave column was cut off and stolen, in an ongoing spate of similar robberies from Memphis cemeteries.

[66] His house, commonly called the Brinkley Mansion, still stands today at 512 Qualia Drive in Del Rio and has been designated Texas Historic Landmark number 13015.

[67][68] Brinkley's life and career is the subject of several books written in the 20th and 21st centuries, including works by Clement Wood (1934 or 1936), Gerald Carson (1960), R. Alton Lee (2002), and Pope Brock (2008).