“Snake Oil” earned the connotation of being a huckster’s fake medical treatment in the early 20th century thanks largely to the efforts of one Clarke Stanley, whose infamous product is featured here. However, the actual origins of snake oil as a medicinal product have a different and more legitimate background in Chinese traditional medicine.
Clarke Stanley showcased his snake-oil product at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, claiming that he, a cowboy who called himself the “Rattlesnake King,” learned from the Hopi Indians how to render the fat from rattlesnakes to make a panacea oil with amazing curative powers.
In fact, snake oil from water snakes had been used by Chinese people to treat inflammation from arthritis or bursitis. Between 1849 and 1882, around 180,000 Chinese people (mostly from southeastern China) immigrated into the United States, many of them working in brutal conditions building the trans-continental railroad. They likely used their own snake-oil products, and maybe some of them shared with white workers, generating an idea about the product that Stanley and others took advantage of.
Indeed, scientific analysis of Chinese water-snake oil (from the black-banded sea krait, _Laticauda semifasciata_) actually might have health benefits — the Omega-3 fatty acids found these snakes is very high (higher than in salmon), and modern tests of its effects on mice seem to suggest that they help the rodents with endurance and performance in maze-learning abilities.
But Clarke’s “rattlesnake” oil didn’t have those high amounts of Omega-3 fatty acids. Moreover, Stanley’s concoctions were mostly free even from rattlesnakes. After the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed, federal officials demanded an analysis of the ingredients of Stanley’s “snake oil,” and found that it contained mineral oil, fatty oil probably from beef, capsicum, and possibly camphor and turpentine. Stanley was given a $20 fine in 1915, and the world was given a new term for pseudo-scientific fake medical treatments.
Sources: _The Pharmaceutical Journal_ 23 Jan 2015, Andrew Haynes, “The history of snake oil.” _Pharmacy Times_, “Fun fact: what was snake oil used to treat in the American West in the 19th century?” Jan 29, 2021, Alana Hippensteele. NPR Codesw!tch, “A history of ‘snake oil salesmen’s” Aug 26, 2013, Lakshmi Gandhi.
