Snake oil
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the medicine. For snake oil in cryptography, see Snake oil (cryptography).
Snake oil is a traditional Chinese medicine used for joint pain. However, the most common usage of the words is as a derogatory term for medicines to imply that they are fake, fraudulent, and usually ineffective. The expression is also applied metaphorically to any product with exaggerated marketing but questionable or unverifiable quality. In short, it refers to a product sold as part of a hoax.
[edit] United States
Snake oil originally came from China, where it was used as a remedy for inflammation and pain in rheumatoid arthritis, bursitis, and other similar conditions. Snake oil is still used as pain reliever in China. Higher in inflammation-reducing eicosapentaenic acid (EPA) than any other known source, snake oil was an excellent and safe remedy for joint pain. Snake oil is still sold in traditional Chinese pharmacy stores.
Chinese labourers on railroad gangs — involved in building the Transcontinental Railroad to link North America coast to coast — gave snake oil to Europeans with joint pain. When rubbed on the skin above the pain, snake oil brought relief ... or so it was claimed. This claim was ridiculed by other rival medicine salesmen, especially those selling patent medicines. In time, snake oil became a generic name for many medicines that were marketed as panaceas or miraculous remedies, whose ingredients were usually secret, unidentified, or mis-characterized — and mostly inert or ineffective. At best the placebo effect might provide some relief for whatever the problem might have been.
Patented snake oil remedies actually originated in England, where patent was granted to Richard Stoughton's Elixir in 1712. [1] Since EPA was unknown in the 19th century, and various medicine salesmen or manufacturers seldom had enough skills in analytical chemistry to analyze the contents and really find out what made snake oil the "miracle" medicine it was claimed to be, snake oil became the archetype of hoax. American snake fats do not have EPA contents that equal those of the Chinese water snake. The American snake oils were probably far less efficient pain relievers than the original Chinese snake oil — further promoting the "hoax" archetyping.
The snake oil peddler became a stock character in Western movies: a travelling "doctor" with dubious credentials, selling some medicine (such as snake oil) with boisterous marketing hype, often supported by pseudo-scientific evidence. To enhance sales, an accomplice in the crowd (a "shill") would often "attest" the value of the product in an effort to provoke buying enthusiasm. The "doctor" would prudently leave town before his customers realized that they had been cheated. This practice is also called "grifting" and its practitioners "grifters".
W. C. Fields portrayed a Western frontier American snake oil salesman in Poppy (1936), complete with crowd accomplice. His demonstration (transparently fraudulent—to the movie audience) from the back of a buckboard of a miraculous cure for hoarseness ignited a comic purchasing frenzy.
English musician and comedy writer Vivian Stanshall satirised a miracle cosmetic as "Rillago—the great ape repellent" and many of J. B. Morton's Beachcomber books and radio programmes included short spoof advertisements for "Snibbo" a fictional treatment allegedly tackling various unlikely human conditions.
The practice of selling dubious remedies for real (or imagined) ailments still occurs today, albeit with some updated marketing techniques. Claims of 'cures' for chronic diseases (for example, diabetes mellitus) for which there are only symptomatic treatments available from "mainstream" medicine are especially common. The term snake oil peddling is used as a derogatory term to describe such practices.
An alternate theory for the origins of the term "snake oil" is that it was a corruption of "Seneca oil". The Senecas, a tribe in the Eastern United States, were known to use petroleum from natural seeps as a liniment for skin ailments. Native Americans are known to have used rattlesnake fat for various purposes.
[edit] Composition of snake oil
The composition of snake oil medicines can vary markedly between products.
Snake oil sold in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1989 was found to contain:
- 75% unidentified carrier material, including camphor
- 25% oil from Chinese water snakes, itself consisting of:
- 20% eicosapentaenic acid (EPA) - an omega 3 derivative
- 48% myristic acid (14:0)
- 10% stearic acid (18:0)
- 14% oleic acid (18:1ω9)
- 7% linoleic acid (18:2ω6) plus arachidonic acid (20:4ω6)
The Chinese water snake (Enhydris chinensis) is the richest known source of EPA, the starting material the body uses to make the series 3 prostaglandins. These prostaglandins are the biochemical messengers that induce and regulate inflammation. Like essential fatty acids, EPA can be absorbed through the skin. Salmon Oil, the next best source, contains 18% EPA. Rattlesnake oil contains 8.5% EPA.
- mineral oil
- 1% fatty oil (presumed to be beef fat)
- red pepper
- turpentine
- camphor
(Note that this makes the above similar in composition to modern-day capsaicin-based liniments. Thus, the original snake oil may have worked rather well as intended, even if it did not contain its alleged ingredients.)
[edit] Real snake oil vindicated?
Given Dr. Richard Kunin's 1989 analysis [2], it appears that the Chinese snake oil made from Chinese water snakes is very high in EPA. This substance is known to be a pain reliever, and the Chinese snake oil products may contain up to 4% of it. Snake oil does not have the dubious reputation in China that it has in the US and elsewhere in the Western world, and it is used widely in traditional Chinese medicine. However, it is not seen as a panacea in China either; there it is used only as relief for arthritis and joint pain.
From a purely pharmacochemical perspective, it is likely that the genuine Chinese snake oil is not fraudulent, at least for its intended purpose. On the other hand, American products made from rattlesnake fats, which have at most 1/3 of the EPA concentration of Enhydris chinensis fat, are likely to have been inferior or even useless for similar purposes. 19th century snake oil peddlers and apothecarians seldom had any serious knowledge of chemistry or pharmacology. It is likely that they did not understand the action mechanism of the Chinese product, or even know its functional ingredient. Instead of analyzing the authentic remedy, they tried to imitate it with unimpressive results. Such inferior or even fraudulent products gave snake oil the reputation it has today.
[edit] See also
- Alchemy and elixir
- Goanna
- Golden hammer
- Magic bullet
- Silver bullet
- Universal panacea
- Quackery
- Traditional Chinese medicine
- David DeAngelo
- Mystery Seduction
[edit] References
- Erasmus, Udo. Fats that heal: Fats that Kill. 1993, ISBN 0-920470-38-6
- Kunin, R.A. "Snake oil." West J Med. 1989 Aug;151(2):208.
[edit] External links
- Snake Oil History by CSICOP
- The Snake Oil FAQ by Matt Curtin and others; pertaining to cryptographic snake oil
- QuackWatch — One of several good websites devoted to analysing the fraudulent claims of the many forms of complementary or alternative medicine. This is a well-researched and well-maintained site containing lots of useful information and links.
