From the Wikipedia entry on snake oil:
Snake oil is an expression that originally referred to fraudulent health products or unproven medicine but has come to refer to any product with questionable or unverifiable quality or benefit. By extension, a snake oil salesman is someone who knowingly sells fraudulent goods or who is themselves a fraud, quack, charlatan, or the like.
History of Snake Oil
There are two main hypotheses for the origin of the term snake oil. The more common theory is that the name originated in the Western regions of the United States and is derived from a topical preparation made from the oil of the Chinese water snake (Enhydris chinensis) which was high in anti-inflammatory properties. Chinese immigrants working on the Transcontinental railroad were observed using snake oil to treat joint pain after a long day of work.
American entrepreneurs wanting to cash-in on the popularity of snake oil attempted to make their own concoctions using rattlesnake oil. Unfortunately, rattlesnake oil is lower in anti-inflammatory properties than its Asian counterpart. And, years later when testing what ingredients were actually in these miracle cure-alls, it was discovered they usually didn’t contain any snake oil. For instance, Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment, advertised to treat arthritis, bursitis and other aches and pains, was actually a combination of mineral oil, beef fat, red pepper and turpentine.
Hawking Snake Oil
Snake oil remedies were heavily promoted in print advertisements, such as newspapers, magazines and farmer’s almanacs. The popular patent medicines were also sold by traveling salesmen touring North America in carnival-like acts called medicine shows.
These traveling circuses were filled with rifle shooting, fire-eating, acrobatic and other entertaining vaudeville acts sure to attract a crowd wherever they went. The entertainment was interspersed with sales pitches and relied heavily on planted shills in the audience who would offer “unsolicited” testimonials proclaiming the many benefits of the patent medicine being sold.
Worner’s Famous Rattlesnake Oil
One source, William S. Haubrich in his book Medical Meanings (1997, American College of Physicians) mentions the hypothesis that the term snake oil came from the eastern United States. The indigenous people of the New York and Pennsylvania region would rub cuts and scrapes with the crude petroleum collected from oil seeps that occurred naturally in the area. European settlers observed this habit and began bottling and selling the substance as a cure-all.
The preparation was sold as “Seneca oil” in the mid-nineteenth century, after the local Native American tribes. Through mispronunciation, this became “Sen-ake-a oil” and eventually “snake oil”. As Haubrich comments, “This story is almost too good to be true – which means it probably isn’t.” It appears to be a case of folk etymology, as no historical evidence appears to exist for this transformation.
European Origin of Snake Oil
The use of snake oil is actually far older than the 19th century, and it was never confined to the Americas. In Europe, viper oil had been commonly recommended for many afflictions, including the ones for which rattlesnake oil was subsequently favored (e.g., rheumatism and skin diseases).
Patent medicines are thought to have originated in England, where a royal patent was first granted to Richard Stoughton’s Elixir in 1712. It is thought that this remedy became a popular British export to the American colonies where it became an in-demand and often imitated item sold by quacks and charlatans at traveling medicine shows.
Patent Medicine and Medicine Shows
Patent medicines were popular in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries and were compounds promoted and sold as cures for various medical complaints. These unregulated medicines contained secret formulas based on old family remedies, but many of them had little practical value.
Popular patent medicine remedies promoted by the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company, and other popular traveling medicine shows back in the day included:
- Aderson’s pills
- Davy’s elixir
- Drake oil
- Dr. Bateman’s pectoral drops
- Keyser’s pills
- Lockyer’s pills
- Eau de luce
- Hamlin’s wizard oil
- Hill’s balsam of honey
- Dr. James’s fever powder
- British oil
- Dutch drops
- Friar’s drops
- Kickapoo Indian sagwa
- Godrey’s cordial
- Nathaniel Godbold’s vegetable balsam
- Dr. Kilmer’s swamp root
- Stoughton’s bitters
- Dr. Morse’s Indian root pills
These miracle cure medicinal tonics, elixirs and drops were available for sale on the open market and didn’t require a doctor’s prescription. Many of these old-fashioned formulas contained harmful and addictive ingredients such as morphine, opium, or cocaine. Laudanum, for example, was mostly a mixture of alcohol and opium. This highly addictive drug was recommended by medical practitioners as a cure-all for all kinds of ailments including tuberculosis, insomnia, and female disorders.
Food and Drug Act
In 1906, Congress passed the Pure Food & Drug Act, which required all ingredients must be listed on the packaging of medicines. This act was passed for “preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors.”
Certain patent medicines were actually helpful and are still available today including Bromo-Seltzer, Luden’s Throat Drops, Phillip’s Milk of Magnesia, and Vick’s Vapor Rub. Others, such as Angostura Bitters and Tonic Water, are still available at your local liquor store but no longer sold as medicine.
Let’s Keep in Touch
Do you have any tips or tricks you’d like to share? Leave a comment on this post or shoot me an email: info@thecreativecottage.net and I just might feature your story in a future blog post.
Take care,
Lynn Smythe
Founder and Chief Blogger
The Creative Cottage
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