Erectile dysfunction historical perspective

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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]

Historical Perspective

Dr. John R. Brinkley initiated a boom in male impotence cures in the US in the 1920s and 1930s. His radio programs recommended expensive goat gland implants and "mercurochrome" injections as the path to restored male virility, including operations by surgeon Serge Voronoff. After the Kansas State Medical Board revoked his medical license and the Federal Radio Commission refused to renew his radio license (both in 1930), Brinkley moved his operations just over the Texas border to Mexico where he opened a medical clinic and broadcast advertisements into the US from a border blaster radio station.

Surgeons began providing patients with inflatable penile implants in the 1970s.

Modern drug therapy for ED made a significant advance in 1983 when British physiologist Giles Brindley, Ph.D. dropped his trousers and demonstrated to a shocked American Urological Association audience his phentolamine-induced erection. The drug Brindley injected into his penis was a non-specific vasodilator, an alpha-blocking agent, and the mechanism of action was clearly corporal smooth muscle relaxation. The effect that Brindley discovered established the fundamentals for the later development of specific, safe, orally-effective drug therapies.

Reference: Helgason ÁR, Adolfsson J, Dickman P, Arver S, Fredrikson M, Göthberg M, Steineck G. Sexual desire, erection, orgasm and ejaculatory functions and their importance to elderly Swedish men: A population-based study. Age and Ageing. 1996:25:285-291.[2]