The Genealogy of “Snake Oil”

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The Travelling Quack (detail), by Tom Merry, 1889 (Wellcome Collection - CC BY 4.0)

When we last gathered under this banner, we dug into the origins of drug names. The intervening two weeks have done nothing to quell the public’s needless skepticism over one of the safest and most commonly used medical interventions, Tylenol.

Charles Baudelaire observed “Americans so dearly love to be fooled,” and his statement is no less true today than it was in the mid-19th century. At the same time, Americans have consistently developed new and ever-more creative ways to dupe each other ever since the cry of “Westward, ho!” drove settlers across the Great Plains from sea to shining sea.

In that paradox lies the secret of “snake oil”: a phrase that conjures at once quack remedy, carnival huckster, and the wider theater of false promise.

The language we inherit often carries the residue of deception — words bearing scars of credulity, of hope, of persuasion gone awry.

From Vipers to Elixirs

To understand how “snake oil” became a byword for fraud, we must first travel to the dim reaches of folk medicine. In traditional Chinese medicine, oil made from certain water snakes was used to ease joint pain and inflammation.

That oil—rich in certain fatty acids—had modest physiological plausibility.¹ Chinese laborers, migrating to the United States in the 19th century and especially into the Western frontier and railroad camps, carried with them their herbal lore and remedies—including snake oil.²

But once such remedies enter the marketplace, they invite corruption. What had been a modest tonic in immigrant enclaves was rebranded, massaged, and mythologized for frontier ears. The snake lost its authenticity, and the bottle acquired a narrative: “Here is the cure the white man never knew.”

Or, in the style of spectacle, a performer might slit open a rattlesnake onstage, boil it, and skims the oil, then promise that the same magic now lies in every vial. The narrative supplanted the substance.

The Rattlesnake King

The person most often associated with the vulgarization of snake oil is Clark Stanley, the self-styled “Rattlesnake King.”³ Around 1893, at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, Stanley staged a dramatic snake-slitting and boiling to demonstrate his liniment.⁴

Over time, the product he sold diverged entirely from its ostensible origins: a U.S. government analysis in 1916 discovered that the “snake oil” in his bottles was nothing more than mineral oil, beef fat, capsicum, and turpentine—none of it derived from snakes.⁵ He pled “nolo contendere” and was fined a modest sum (about $20).