Genuine Snake Oil

fiction4
Jan 21
4 min read

Say it: “Snake oil.”

Can’t you just feel the hissing, coiled power of venomous contempt?

“Snake oil.”

That two-word phrase packs more punch than “it’s a scam,” “fake news,” and “total B.S.” combined. Everyone knows that snake oil is just a placebo masquerading as a legitimate cure, peddled by a charlatan who cares more about your money than your health…

…But actually? Placebo and charlatan more accurately describe something once called “patent medicine.” The real snake oil was – and still is – something very different. Regardless of that unfortunate label.

Snakes as Medicine

When Chinese laborers arrived in the U.S. to build the Transcontinental Railroad during the mid-19th century, they brought traditional medicines from their homeland, including a greasy paste they applied to the skin as a topical pain reliever. It derived from the black-banded sea krait (Laticauda semifasciata), a venomous aquatic snake found in the coastal waters of eastern Asia. This paste likely contained a significant percentage of eicosapentaenoic acid, an omega-3 fatty acid with anti-inflammatory properties. After a long day of moving rocks and laying track bed, a reliable anti-inflammatory would have been just the thing for muscle and joint pain.

Stirred into America’s rapidly changing culture of the 1800s, this proven remedy from Asia soon became conflated with at least two other healing traditions:

1) Immigrants from Scotland had introduced a belief in the healing powers of the adder (Vipera berus). A venomous viper found throughout Europe and the only such snake native to the British Isles, the adder was said to heal wounds and cure illness when the wounded or ill person touched the reptile’s severed head or ate its flesh.

2) Throughout the American Southwest, healers from various indigenous groups relied on the rattlesnake, a collective name for 36 species of the Crotalus and Sistrurus genera. In those medical practices, rattlesnake tails were used to ease childbirth, pacify teething babies, and prevent convulsions.

Thanks to the weirdness of that noisemaking snake, its highly toxic venom, our atavistic fear of reptiles, and the biblical villainy attributed to a persuasive serpent in the Garden of Eden, rural Americans developed superstitions and wild folklore about snakes. And that uneasy fascination ultimately benefitted the growing patent medicine industry.

Marketing 101

We can be certain that most so-called patent medicines were never granted any kind of patent. Instead, they fell under a conveniently misleading 19th-century term for proprietary formula. When you bought patent medicine, you believed that someone had taken great pains to formulate this elixir. These medical products possibly originated from Native American or European folk remedies. But even in those days, savvy marketers knew that you could move more units by elevating a product’s profile. An effective remedy sold even better with a bit of miraculous cachet.

The most sensational and notorious patent medicines came in bottles filled with a blend of water, plant extracts, sugar, food coloring, and sometimes alcohol or derivatives of opium or coca. These nostrums purportedly cured everything from colic to liver ailments to female troubles. They had comforting, confident names like Dr. Hostetter's Stomach Bitters, Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, Dr. Winslow's Soothing Syrup, and Kopp's Baby Friend.

A tried-and-true sales tactic has always been comparison: our product is a bottled miracle, and all others are suspect – if not outright dangerous. And if you’re going to other an inferior product, why not stir in a bit of racism and moral judgment that’s sure to resonate with your target market?

“Surely, sir, you’d rather have a fine American product like Dr. Hostetter’s and not some Chinese snake oil!”

Atavistic "eww!" because snakes. Racist "uh-oh!" because Chinese. (See where this is going?)

Never mind that the snake oil in question was a proven remedy for the pain of rheumatoid arthritis, bursitis, and pulled muscles. Never mind that Mrs. Pinkham’s compound mostly got teetotaling women good and drunk, or that Dr. Winslow’s syrup pacified cranky babies with a stiff dose of morphine. It was all in the packaging, the marketing spiel – and the cultural aversion to Chinese snake oil.

Language Is Stronger Than Truth

Patent medicine was more than an industry built on hyperbole and fraud. It was also a product category that endangered the public by pointing consumers toward ineffective or even harmful medical solutions. Thanks in part to a series of magazine articles by muckraking journalist Samuel Hopkins Adams, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which made it illegal to falsify the ingredients of products sold for human consumption. Of course, there were (and still are) loopholes, but this legislation effectively killed patent medicine.

Pharmaceutical science has been with us for at least five millennia (first documented in bencao, a materia medica from China, of all places!), yet the patent medicine craze of the 19th century created a major commercial sector, attracting the attention of both big business (selling a product) and government oversight (regulating product safety). With these forces in play, the 20th and 21st centuries have been marked with battles over what’s real medicine and what isn’t. Sometimes it’s still about fraud. Sometimes it’s about wishful thinking and public perception. Sometimes medicine isn’t considered legitimate until verified through exhaustive clinical trials (which can be subject to political or economic pressure).