You don’t have to look far in the realms of business, politics, and wellness to find the terms “snake oil” and “snake oil salesman” being thrown around. “Snake oil” has long been a euphemism for misleading claims or empty promises masquerading as legitimate solutions.
Long before it became shorthand for fraud and quackery, snake oil made from the fat of Chinese water snakes was used as an anti-inflammatory remedy in traditional Chinese medicine. The concept may have been brought to North America by Chinese immigrants working on the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s.
Yet it was a very different kind of snake oil that Clark Stanley introduced to the attendees of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Dressed in a cowboy-inspired outfit and calling himself “The Rattlesnake King,” Stanley demonstrated how he extracted oil from rattlesnakes by slicing them open and adding them to boiling water. He claimed to have learned of their miraculous healing properties from the Hopi in Arizona.
Setting aside the likely falsehood of that assertion—and the fact that rattlesnakes and Chinese water snakes have very different fat compositions—the “miraculous” product sold as “Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment” didn’t have snake oil of any kind in it. Yet due to Stanley’s flair for the theatrical during his medicine shows and effective print advertisements, would-be customers clamored for snake oil for more than 20 years, eager to enjoy the “immediate relief” promised for everything from rheumatism, sciatica, and neuralgia to sore throats, toothaches, and insect bites.
Stanley’s snake oil was manufactured in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and sold at drugstores across the country, alongside a slew of other “patent medicines” (which, ironically, usually weren’t patented). These products made exaggerated claims about the main ailments they could treat and could be readily obtained without a prescription. Some utilized drugs like cocaine or morphine that provided pain relief, yet certainly couldn’t cure infectious illnesses or chronic conditions.
Despite the introduction of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, which prohibited false and misleading statements, and the 1912 Sherley Amendment, which focused on manufacturer intent, Stanley would enjoy success with his snake oil until 1917, amid the introduction of medically sound remedies for joint pain and the discovery that Stanley’s supposedly therapeutic liniment was completely devoid of actual snake oil.
The rise and fall of snake oil:
- Recognizing that his luck had run out, Stanley paid the $20 fine he was given for violating the Pure Food and Drug Act and quietly shut down his snake oil enterprise.
- So what was actually in Stanley’s “snake oil”? According to investigators in the 1910s, it consisted of turpentine, mineral oil, beef fat, and capsaicin from chili peppers.
- Although snake oil ultimately became infamous as a symbol of false advertising, many other innovations from the 1893 Columbian Exposition proved legitimate (Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, Wrigley’s Chewing Gum) and even life-changing (the automatic dishwasher).
