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The Ridiculous History of "Snake Oil" · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's hear it for our number one
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Speaker 1: medicine man super producer, mister Max Williams.
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Speaker 2: Because I only did the booze so I could do
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Speaker 2: the hiss, because the hiss it's just topic appropriate.
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Speaker 1: And hiss doesn't make sense, you know, without the boo. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's just what do we cat people?
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Speaker 2: You need the boo followed by the hiss. If everyone
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Speaker 2: were to hiss first, I would immediately not take them seriously.
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Speaker 1: It sounds like you're booing your own hiss exactly.
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Speaker 2: It's all about decorum here when it comes to nagging
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Speaker 2: people in public.
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Speaker 1: Your Noel, I'm Ben, and today our booze and our
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Speaker 1: hisses are appropriate because we're talking about something that's a
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Speaker 1: little bit etymology, it's a little bit marketing. It is
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Speaker 1: one hundred percent ridiculous, Noel. We are exploring snake oil.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, snake oil like as a concept, as an actual
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Speaker 2: thing that legitimately existed. Like, let's think of the you know,
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Speaker 2: I think maybe a lot of people's first experience with
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Speaker 2: the idea of a traveling snake oil salesman was probably
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Speaker 2: in The Wizard of Oz.
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Speaker 1: In the original Wizard of Oz with the guy whatever.
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Speaker 2: His name was, you know who in the black and
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Speaker 2: white version ends up being the I guess when Dorothy's
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Speaker 2: having her psychotic break and all the little details are
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Speaker 2: kaiser sozeing their way into her brain. That guy rep
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Speaker 2: since the Wizard of Oz, but he travels around in
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Speaker 2: a caravan that has a sign something marvelous. I believe
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Speaker 2: it has the word marvelous in it, and he sells
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Speaker 2: like tonics and stuff, you know, and like remedies, things
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Speaker 2: purported to be cure all's cure some perhaps panaceas your
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Speaker 2: mileage may vary, caveat em thor and so on.
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Speaker 1: I love to use the word remedy because I know
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Speaker 1: it is a very dangerous time in history. But I
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Speaker 1: miss the days when you could just put any stupid,
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Speaker 1: possibly dangerous thing in a bottle, slap a label on
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Speaker 1: it that said remedy and some high faluting esoteric language,
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Speaker 1: and people would buy it. That's like that's snake oil, right,
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Speaker 1: some kind of fake treatment or cure, a way to
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Speaker 1: fix a condition that modern medicine just can't combat. You
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Speaker 1: see it all the time, right, like bad skin, baldness, cancer,
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Speaker 1: genetic diseases, what else?
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Speaker 2: Oh man, I mean you name it basically, but I
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Speaker 2: do want to issue a quick correction for what I said.
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Speaker 2: It was a Professor Marvel, which is cool because that
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Speaker 2: sounds very.
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Speaker 1: Much like a comic book character.
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Speaker 2: I mean, obviously we have Captain Marvel in the in
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Speaker 2: the Marvel Cinematic and comic book universe. But he wasn't
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Speaker 2: selling He necessarily wasn't necessarily selling products like that. He
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Speaker 2: was more of a fortune teller, acclaimed by the crowned
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Speaker 2: heads of Europe itself. Let him read your past, present
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Speaker 2: and future in his crystal. But the vehicle and the
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Speaker 2: wagon that he's riding around in is exactly the same
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Speaker 2: as those made famous by these very shady individuals, you know,
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Speaker 2: roaming the countryside or whatever in you know, maybe days
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Speaker 2: of great depression and beyond, trying to sell hapless individuals
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Speaker 2: on some kind of thing that would maybe cure what
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Speaker 2: ailed them, but probably can nothing but mineral spirits.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, Better Business Bureau loves these guys. Kidding. BBB wasn't around,
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Speaker 1: But I know you said something really interesting. I think
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Speaker 1: maybe we start there. Snake oil, although now it means
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Speaker 1: any cure treatment that falsely promises extraordinary results, is and
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Speaker 1: was a real thing in other cultures. Like let's go,
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Speaker 1: let's journey back to the days of ancient Chinese traditional medicine.
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Speaker 1: They used water snakes or oil from water snakes as
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Speaker 1: a treatment for joint pain. And I don't know, I
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Speaker 1: think we all have in the West such an association
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Speaker 1: with snake oil as a term for con artists, that
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Speaker 1: we kind of forget the legitimate attempts that humanity has
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Speaker 1: had using snake oil. Like it goes all the way
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Speaker 1: back to the seventeen hundreds, I think is the first
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Speaker 1: time the phrase is used in print.
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Speaker 2: And Old Webster in his famous Dictionary does point out,
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Speaker 2: as you said, Ben, the first printed use of snake
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Speaker 2: oil appears in the early seventeen hundreds. But again with
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Speaker 2: examples from you know, ancient historian, ancient Roman historian Pliny
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Speaker 2: the Elder, we have examples dating as far back as
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Speaker 2: the early to mid sixteen hundreds referring to specific combinations
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Speaker 2: of the snake juice, you know, being ground and beaten
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Speaker 2: and strained into something that did seem to be helpful
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Speaker 2: to some degree. I think maybe my favorite one is
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Speaker 2: this longer one from John French from the Art of Distillation.
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Speaker 1: Ben, I believe you found this one. This is great.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is okay. So before we do this,
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Speaker 1: when everybody needs to know that it is written in
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Speaker 1: an older kind of tone. That's why it's cool, right.
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Speaker 1: So the oil of snakes and Adams. Take snakes us
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Speaker 1: when they are fat, which will be in June or July,
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Speaker 1: cut off their heads and take off their skins and
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Speaker 1: unbowel them and put them in a glass gord. Uh no,
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Speaker 1: why you take the.
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Speaker 2: Rest of this Well, first of all, let's let's just
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Speaker 2: unback a little bit of this work a glass gourd.
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Speaker 1: What does that just mean? A jar basically? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: it was uh yeah, it was a glass. It was
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Speaker 1: like a mason jar.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe one of those heavy like a heavy mason jar, right.
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Speaker 1: Uh.
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Speaker 2: And then you have unbowel, which does make sense, you know,
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Speaker 2: because you know, to how does one bowel something You
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Speaker 2: can really can't. It's really no putting it back. Once
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Speaker 2: it's unboweled, then you're kind of done. But I've always
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Speaker 2: heard it, you know, described as disemboweled rather than emboweled.
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Speaker 2: So this is a funny. I've never seen it quite
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Speaker 2: stated this way before. So to unbowel them would be
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Speaker 2: to remove their their guddies.
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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and then you pour a bunch of wine
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Speaker 1: over it, and then you seal up the glass and
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Speaker 1: well rectified so rectified, yeah, fortified wine like mad Dog
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Speaker 1: forty forty type stuff or whatever it's called. And then
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Speaker 1: you have to just keep it there. Eventually. What John
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Speaker 1: French tells us is that when this stuff has matured,
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Speaker 1: you can use it to help people here again, or
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Speaker 1: as he puts it.
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Speaker 3: This oil doff wonderful cures and recovering hearing and those
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Speaker 3: that'd be deaf if a few drops thereof be put
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Speaker 3: quam into the ears right right now?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, if it's talking about removing earwax or gunk,
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Speaker 1: then maybe. But spoiler, folks, John French did not invent
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Speaker 1: a cure for deafness.
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Speaker 2: Bummer. Yeah, that was pretty permanent. I don't think anyone's
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Speaker 2: quite cracked that code yet. It is funny, though, because
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Speaker 2: when I hear things like this, and again, no shade
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Speaker 2: on anyone that's into like holistic remedies or herbal remedies,
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Speaker 2: and some of them, you know, again, your milas may vary.
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Speaker 2: But like things like ear candling. Have you heard of
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Speaker 2: this that these like things he has shove in your
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Speaker 2: ears and the item they, you know, supposedly like extract
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Speaker 2: the wax from your ears. I've never known them to
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Speaker 2: be particularly effective, but they do. When you crack them open.
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Speaker 2: They're filled with kind of weird, gross stuff, so it
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Speaker 2: does have the appearance of working. But again, I don't know, folks.
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Speaker 2: If you guys are proponents of ear candling, let us
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Speaker 2: know if that works for you. But of course, we
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Speaker 2: are going to eventually get to where the origins of
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Speaker 2: a lot of this kind of holistic medicine comes from,
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Speaker 2: you know, referred too often as Eastern medicine. When the
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Speaker 2: Chinese American population started to kind of boom in the
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Speaker 2: United States, a lot of these traditional remedies or medicines
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Speaker 2: were brought with them.
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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, this is where we see the evolution toward
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Speaker 1: the current definition of snake oil. There's a guy named
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Speaker 1: Richard White. He wrote a book called Railroad, and it's
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Speaker 1: all about the thousands and thousands of Chinese nationals who
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Speaker 1: immigrated to the US between eighteen forty nine and eighteen
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Speaker 1: eighty two and estimated one hundred and eighty thousand people.
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Speaker 2: I'm sensing a double entendre in the name of the book,
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Speaker 2: as though they maybe perhaps got a raw deal.
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Speaker 1: Again An he's a smart cookie, yeah, and it's a
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Speaker 1: good book. There's another guy, another author, David Howard Bain,
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Speaker 1: who wrote a book called Empire Express And when you
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Speaker 1: read these two books together you learn a lot about
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Speaker 1: the demographics. So the majority of these immigrants came from
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Speaker 1: lower income families, peasant families in southeastern China, and they
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Speaker 1: got signed up to these horrific contracts that would lock
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Speaker 1: them in for you know, five years or more with
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Speaker 1: very low wages compared to their other coworkers, the European counterparts.
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Speaker 1: So they had to resort to some of their own
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Speaker 1: traditional cultural practices when they couldn't go to a doctor
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Speaker 1: or something like that, you know, not even putting the
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Speaker 1: money aside, just the racism at the time made it
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Speaker 1: difficult for them to get medical treatment. They brought with
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Speaker 1: them this incredibly rich cultural history dating back thousands of years,
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Speaker 1: and one of the things they brought with them was
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Speaker 1: the idea of traditional medicine. Including that snake oil that
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Speaker 1: we mentioned from the Chinese water snake, which actually works
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Speaker 1: a little apparently. Well it makes sense though, doesn't it.
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Speaker 2: It is an aquatic creature, and so it makes sense
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Speaker 2: perhaps that the oil from these water snakes might contain
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Speaker 2: some of the same nutrients that fish contain. And to
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Speaker 2: this day, people still swear by fish oil supplements, you know,
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Speaker 2: because they contain a ton of omega three fatty acids,
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Speaker 2: you know, which are apparently quite good for you. And
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Speaker 2: that's also good reason why people like you know, say,
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Speaker 2: a pescatarian diet is better than you know, being eating
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Speaker 2: all the meats, right.
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Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, yeah, as long as you can avoid the mercury.
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Speaker 1: So fair enough, fair enough. So they did something that
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Speaker 1: we see pretty often in the US. It's one of
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Speaker 1: our favorite phenomena here. They took the techniques and processes
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Speaker 1: that they already were very familiar with and they substituted
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Speaker 1: ingredients because, surprise, folks, not a lot of Chinese water
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Speaker 1: snakes in the continental US. So they started looking for
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Speaker 1: other snakes. And what do we do when they made
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Speaker 1: this snake oil with the omega three acids that you're
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Speaker 1: talking about there, they would rub it on their joints
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Speaker 1: after a long day of hard labor, and eventually, as
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Speaker 1: they were hanging out with other coworkers and parts of
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Speaker 1: their cohort, they started sharing the oil like, oh, hey,
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Speaker 1: darn or whatever it s you said. Your knees hurt
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Speaker 1: or your lower back hurts or something like that. Try
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Speaker 1: this just when you get home from work. Just rub
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Speaker 1: this on your joints and it will help soothe the pain.
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Speaker 2: And again, the placebo effect is so strong. You're in
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Speaker 2: a difficult working environment, you are suffering, you know, likely
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Speaker 2: because of long hours and difficult working conditions, and someone
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Speaker 2: offers you a helping hands, someone offers you something that
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Speaker 2: they purported works for me.
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Speaker 1: I swear by this. Try it out. Oh gosh, you're right,
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Speaker 1: it does work.
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Speaker 2: Tell your friends, you know, before you know it, everybody's
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Speaker 2: gaga for this this oil. You know they will, and
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Speaker 2: who knows, man, it could literally just be the fact
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Speaker 2: that it's a slippery, smooth, soothing, cool substance, you know
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Speaker 2: what I mean.
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Speaker 1: It could be as simple as that.
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Speaker 2: And we know that these types of phenomenon are still
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Speaker 2: very powerful to day, you know, because of all of
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Speaker 2: the weird bunk products that get pedled on TV or
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Speaker 2: on like you know, Huckster's like Alex Jones' Network Info Wars,
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Speaker 2: like a lot of that bone broth and things like that,
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Speaker 2: you know whatever. Again, we're not here to debunk any
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Speaker 2: one particular thing, but we know that there are people
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Speaker 2: out there that are trying to prey on those who
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Speaker 2: maybe haven't done their homework or or are just.
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Speaker 1: Are just really desperate and looking for some relief. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and we see that people were acting with good intention
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Speaker 1: at the very beginning here they said, we can't find
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Speaker 1: the Chinese water snakes because we're not in China. In
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Speaker 1: the US, people started thinking, well, any snake can work, right,
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Speaker 1: Rattlesnake oil was incredibly popular, Like through the seventeen hundreds.
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Speaker 1: There's this thing I found from December seventeen forty two
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Speaker 1: that show was US snake oil was popular across the
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Speaker 1: pond as well. In the History of the Works of
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Speaker 1: the Learned, Uh, this guy describes three types of oil
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Speaker 1: in the US, snake oil, and says, now three sorts
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Speaker 1: of oil in that country whose virtues are fully proved
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Speaker 1: might not perhaps be found despicable. The oil of drums,
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Speaker 1: the oil of rattlesnakes, and that here's the weird one,
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Speaker 1: and that of turkey busters turkey bustard? Is that a
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Speaker 1: type of vulture? Isn't that what that is? I believe,
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Speaker 1: I believe it is. Yeah, it's a it's a ground
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Speaker 1: Uh it's a ground bird, isn't it? Maybe?
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Speaker 2: So I swear for some reason, I'm thinking turkey vulture.
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Speaker 2: But the word bustered is very old. Yeah, busted bush
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Speaker 2: turkeys and yeah, A man, I love it when you
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Speaker 2: google something and then gain people also ask first one
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Speaker 2: is are bustards good eaten?
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Speaker 4: I got?
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Speaker 1: I got? Why is it called busted? Yeah? What is
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Speaker 1: the largest bustard? What does the bustard look like? Oh? Weird?
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Speaker 1: Bird names are so ridiculous, they are.
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Speaker 2: He's got a real he looks you know, honestly, dude,
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Speaker 2: he really does look more like a vulture. He's got
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Speaker 2: a real long, kind of like snakelike neck, and this
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Speaker 2: one that I'm looking at is covered in feathers. But
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Speaker 2: then he has those real reptilian kind of claws.
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Speaker 1: You know, I feel yeah, yeah, yeah, And we know
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Speaker 1: that we also know that people believed in this is
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Speaker 1: genuine medicine. There's a guy named Jeremiah Barker writing for
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Speaker 1: the Medical Repository in New York in eighteen oh two,
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Speaker 1: and he is convinced that you could use what was it,
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Speaker 1: rattlesnake oil and a half a pint of bear grease
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Speaker 1: Jesus to cure yourself of colic. Okay, I don't even
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Speaker 1: I don't even really know what colic is.
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Speaker 2: Colic is none of that babies have. I mean that's specifically.
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Speaker 2: You know, you always hear about colicky babies. They have
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Speaker 2: like a like a coll or, they're like really hard
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Speaker 2: to soothe. But I've never really thought of it being
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Speaker 2: anything that an adult would have. Yeah, colicky crying is louder,
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Speaker 2: more high pitched, and more urgent sounded than regular crying.
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Speaker 2: So this would specifically be a treatment for an infant
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Speaker 2: or a small child.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, let's give them half a pint of bear grease.
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Speaker 1: A bear grease, man, it's a staple item in every household.
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Speaker 1: So bear bear grease is basically just fat from a bear.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is actually gonna kind of piggyback onto
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Speaker 2: the question that I was kind of holding in my
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Speaker 2: back pocket here. Rattlesnake oil seems very dangerous to procure
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Speaker 2: as as does bear grease. And it seems like only
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Speaker 2: a certain kind of echelon of like you know, frontiersman's
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Speaker 2: would be able to acquire this stuff, you know, and
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Speaker 2: and live to tell about it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's also it still exists today. There's you
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Speaker 1: can find rattlesnake oil online or purported rattlesnake oil. You
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Speaker 1: can also find rattlesnake oil soap apparently, which some people
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Speaker 1: swear by for treating skin conditions. Anyway, this stuff expands
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Speaker 1: pretty soon people are starting to use snake oil not
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Speaker 1: just to refer to medicine, but to all sorts of stuff.
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Speaker 1: It becomes. It becomes a euphemism for liquor, for like
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Speaker 1: hard alcoholic spirits and not as good as old Granddad's
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Speaker 1: leg medicine. No, no, not as good as Grandpa's leg medicine,
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Speaker 1: thank you for shouting that one out. At the end
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Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, snake oil begins to acquire its
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Speaker 1: current meaning. A mixture sould is medicine, usually without regard
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Speaker 1: to its medical worth.
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Speaker 2: Well, and I wonder if that maybe figures into my
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Speaker 2: previous point slash question, like you know you got these
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Speaker 2: the rise of sort of the modern snake oil salesmen
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Speaker 2: who were maybe like, Wow, this snake oil stuff is booming.
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Speaker 1: But snakes are scary.
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Speaker 2: They're all bitey bite and you know, have venomous, you know,
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Speaker 2: big old fangs, and you know, I don't.
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Speaker 1: Want to mess with that.
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Speaker 2: What if I just like slap something in a bottle
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Speaker 2: and said that's what it was, who's gonna stop me?
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Speaker 2: As you pointed out earlier, Ben, there is no Better
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Speaker 2: Business Bureau, There is no consumer reports, there is no
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Speaker 2: protection or FDA, you know, for that matter, there's nothing
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Speaker 2: in that realm at all to protect consumers from these people.
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Speaker 2: It was all kind of on good faith, and I
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Speaker 2: think even the idea of marketing and stuff was still
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Speaker 2: relatively new in.
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Speaker 1: The United States at this time.
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Speaker 2: So it's kind of like, oh, the door's wide open
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Speaker 2: for bad actors to come creeping in, even if maybe
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Speaker 2: their intentions were good. But I don't think this Clark
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Speaker 2: Stanley Fellow's intentions were ever good.
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Speaker 1: His intentions toward himself were good. Okay, fair, Can you
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Speaker 1: can you tell us about the rattlesnake king? Yes, yes,
19:01
Speaker 1: former cowboy retires. His name is Clark Stanley. As he said, Noel.
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Speaker 1: His street name is the Rattlesnake King. This is way
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Speaker 1: before Tiger King. Obviously, our buddy Clark stumbles onto this
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Speaker 1: idea and he tells people that after he became a cowboy,
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Speaker 1: he spent years with spiritual leaders in the Hope Native community,
19:26
Speaker 1: mastering quote unquote the secret of snake oil. He gets
19:31
Speaker 1: together with a druggist, a pharmacist basically in Boston, and
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Speaker 1: he begins marketing his product, his snake oil, as the
19:42
Speaker 1: new cure all for whatever ails you. He makes his
19:46
Speaker 1: own patent medicine. He's not the only guy in the
19:49
Speaker 1: game here, but he is one of the most successful.
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Speaker 1: There were tons of what's where we use remedies, tonics,
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Speaker 1: purported medical cures for all kinds of ailments at the time,
20:02
Speaker 1: what about gout? What about gout? While I, of course
20:07
Speaker 1: whileye also drops the left handedness alto m M yeah, yes, shooty.
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Speaker 6: Okay, all right, okay, Ben, I was writing something recently
20:16
Speaker 6: and Andrew Jackson came up, and I was trying to
20:18
Speaker 6: remember every single disease you said Andrew Jackson had when
20:22
Speaker 6: we did our episode about when he beat the crap out.
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Speaker 1: Of it due to the cane. Oh he did do that. Yeah. Yeah.
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Speaker 5: There was a lot of diseases we listed, and dropsy.
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Speaker 1: Was one of them. That's the funniest disease of them all.
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Speaker 1: What is it again? Is it real? What was dropsy?
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Speaker 1: It's a dropsy is a less technical term for something
20:43
Speaker 1: called edema, Okay, and edema is when a lot of
20:49
Speaker 1: watery fluid collects in the cavities of the body. So yeah, yeah, yeah,
20:57
Speaker 1: I don't know why. We'd have to look into the
20:59
Speaker 1: etymology of how it became called dropsy. But before we
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Speaker 1: do that, I love the term patent medicine and I
21:07
Speaker 1: didn't know much about it. Patent medicine, it turns out,
21:12
Speaker 1: have been around in England for a long long time.
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Speaker 1: And I think the reason people loved calling stuff patent
21:20
Speaker 1: medicine in the US is because it felt posh, It
21:23
Speaker 1: felt established.
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Speaker 2: Is it referring to the idea of being some sort
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Speaker 2: of proprietary you know, like patented form of treatment or
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Speaker 2: is it or those terms not related?
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Speaker 1: No, they are very much recoated. Yeah. Yeah, because patent
21:39
Speaker 1: medicines originally named after a certain dispensation given by English royalty.
21:46
Speaker 1: You would get the letters patent which is a cosign
21:51
Speaker 1: from the big influencers of the day. So the first
21:55
Speaker 1: letters patent is given to this guy who evinces a
21:58
Speaker 1: secret remedy in the late seventeenth century. And essentially what
22:03
Speaker 1: this says is, Hey, we the royal family of England,
22:09
Speaker 1: we mess with this guy. We think he's legit and
22:12
Speaker 1: only he can make his secret recipe.
22:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, after all, it's at least a couple
22:18
Speaker 2: of rungs above leeching and blood letting. Yeah, it's not like.
22:23
Speaker 1: They weren't willing to try just about whatever. But yeah,
22:26
Speaker 1: you're right.
22:27
Speaker 2: Isn't it funny how the blessing for these kind of
22:28
Speaker 2: things came not from a learned body of physicians, but
22:32
Speaker 2: specifically from the royal family, who like practiced all of
22:36
Speaker 2: these barbaric you know, like trepanation and all of these
22:39
Speaker 2: like insane treatments over throughout history. You know, they were
22:43
Speaker 2: usually popularized by royalty. That's when, like you know, everyone
22:47
Speaker 2: else would do He's like, well, the king does it.
22:49
Speaker 2: Of course we're gonna do it. Why wouldn't I drill
22:52
Speaker 2: a hole in my skull to let the demons out?
22:53
Speaker 1: What am I poor? And so the funny thing is
22:57
Speaker 1: pat medicine in the US at this time, very few
23:02
Speaker 1: products were ever actually patented. Instead, they just slapped the
23:06
Speaker 1: word patent on it and sold it from their wagons.
23:10
Speaker 1: And these things, these all had amazing names, like the
23:13
Speaker 1: early English patent medicines. I thought you would enjoy some
23:17
Speaker 1: of these Bateman's pectoral Drops, Turlington's Bosam of Life, and
23:24
Speaker 1: of course the troublingly problematic Hooper's female Pills. Yeah.
23:28
Speaker 2: Just you know again, that's the funny thing about it,
23:32
Speaker 2: is like they're just so broad, it's just beyond suspicious.
23:36
Speaker 2: But I guess at the time, if you have a
23:38
Speaker 2: little alliteration in your title and a snappy label and
23:41
Speaker 2: you have patent on there, then you're probably people are
23:43
Speaker 2: gonna be like, sure, why not, And we're gonna get
23:45
Speaker 2: to some of these more like the kind of dogged
23:49
Speaker 2: pony show of it all, you know, where you let's
23:51
Speaker 2: do a demonstration, you know, like the loaves and fishes
23:54
Speaker 2: and everything. I mean, okay, not to compare these guys
23:56
Speaker 2: to Jesus Christ. That was maybe a bridge too far,
23:59
Speaker 2: but it is all about like, let's make converts of
24:02
Speaker 2: you by showing you that this stuff really works, you know,
24:06
Speaker 2: right A very public setting. But oftentimes these people were
24:09
Speaker 2: employing plants, you know. And what I mean, I don't
24:12
Speaker 2: mean like you know, bushes, I mean individuals in the
24:15
Speaker 2: audience who were paid to do what they ask them
24:19
Speaker 2: to do, to like, you know, pretend to be cured instantly,
24:22
Speaker 2: very similar to like big tent revivals.
24:24
Speaker 1: And all of that stuff.
24:26
Speaker 6: Yeah, jump in here. I have, of course been digging
24:29
Speaker 6: around on Amazon looking for snake oil, literally snake oil.
24:33
Speaker 6: I will say, actually, first and foremost, most of the
24:35
Speaker 6: stuff I find is for snake repellent, which is actually
24:38
Speaker 6: very useful. My mom uses synthetic wolf you're in to
24:42
Speaker 6: repel critters around her house Missus Williams, very classic Missus
24:47
Speaker 6: Williams from repelling them from her plants. But so it
24:50
Speaker 6: makes sense having snake repellent. But there is I won't
24:53
Speaker 6: name any brand because I don' want anyone to get
24:55
Speaker 6: mad at me, but there is one.
24:57
Speaker 5: It's just a bar of soap. Yes, snake oil.
25:00
Speaker 6: And if you go to product details, the first one
25:03
Speaker 6: is is discontinued by manufacturer and colon.
25:07
Speaker 5: No, No, that's the first thing. That's the first.
25:10
Speaker 6: The second one is the dimensions. That's the first thing
25:13
Speaker 6: but I also found this other one, and I don't
25:16
Speaker 6: know if it actually has snake oil, but it reads
25:19
Speaker 6: just like something that snake oil as it. You know,
25:22
Speaker 6: it is a moisturizing facial theorem for anti aging acne
25:26
Speaker 6: scar treatment, Google massage, face, hair and skin, Google massage.
25:32
Speaker 6: I have no idea what it is, but I'm just
25:33
Speaker 6: reading it Vadim.
25:34
Speaker 1: Cool.
25:35
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll put a pin in that, Max with the facts.
25:41
Speaker 4: That sneaking in the phone and tease fallen knowlsh it's
25:47
Speaker 4: just for you right now, with the fact.
25:53
Speaker 1: Or with the.
25:55
Speaker 2: Very questionable the pattern facts. Fair enough, that's good, let's
25:59
Speaker 2: go with that. But Ben, this is super cool. We've
26:01
Speaker 2: got okay, we've got a female I think we last
26:03
Speaker 2: left off with Hooper's female pills.
26:06
Speaker 1: These were all smashed sensations.
26:08
Speaker 2: We also have the very aptly named Dicey's Doctor Bateman's Drops.
26:13
Speaker 1: Which is confusing. Okay, who is dices Drops or doctor Bateman's.
26:19
Speaker 1: It's like that steakhouse that drives me Chris, Yeah, Ruth's
26:23
Speaker 1: Chris Steakhouse. Why what is going I've been there. It's nice.
26:29
Speaker 1: It's a nice place.
26:30
Speaker 2: But the nickname or something like Ruth's son's name was
26:36
Speaker 2: Chris or something, so it was Ruth's Chris steakhout.
26:41
Speaker 1: You know what, they're justified. They're chef's you know, they're
26:45
Speaker 1: they're not language doctors, but they make a fine they
26:49
Speaker 1: make asteak, yes, sir, And so Dicey's doctor Bateman's drops.
26:55
Speaker 1: That came from King George the First and uh it
26:59
Speaker 1: was pat and and the pat was granted by King
27:02
Speaker 1: George the First in seventeen twenty six. These patent medicines
27:06
Speaker 1: we just named were all very popular in North America
27:09
Speaker 1: at the time. The American Revolution still hasn't happened, right,
27:12
Speaker 1: there's no US to speak of yet, But it didn't
27:16
Speaker 1: take long for enterprising Americans to look around and say, hey,
27:20
Speaker 1: why are we shipping this stuff all the way from England?
27:23
Speaker 1: Why don't we make our own home brewed patent medicine.
27:27
Speaker 1: And the numbers and types of medications or panaceas grew
27:32
Speaker 1: in the decades leading up through the Revolution all the
27:37
Speaker 1: way to the Civil War. It was a great way
27:41
Speaker 1: to make money if you weren't concerned about hurting people, right.
27:46
Speaker 2: Especially if you weren't concerned about hurting people, because I mean, honestly,
27:50
Speaker 2: these folks who decided to get in on this were
27:53
Speaker 2: clearly wise to the grift, and they're like, why bother
27:56
Speaker 2: importing all this stuff? We know it's bullshit anyway, just
28:00
Speaker 2: make it here at home and save us some tax
28:02
Speaker 2: and some shipping.
28:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, And at the same time, the Civil War is
28:07
Speaker 1: going to be a big, big part of the story here.
28:10
Speaker 1: At the same time, we see that there are rapid
28:13
Speaker 1: increases in industry, manufacturing, where people are living in cities,
28:19
Speaker 1: there's still an absence of drug regulation to your earlier
28:23
Speaker 1: excellent point, all of this makes a perfect environment for
28:27
Speaker 1: patent medicine, and a lot of people turn to it
28:30
Speaker 1: because they didn't trust regular medical practices of the time.
28:36
Speaker 1: And this is where we learn about something called heroic medicine.
28:40
Speaker 1: So before we call these people dunderheads or anything, we
28:44
Speaker 1: have to realize that official accepted medicine at the time
28:49
Speaker 1: was pretty gnarly and dangerous.
28:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's's crazy that it was like still,
28:54
Speaker 2: you know, even in you know, we're thinking of things
28:56
Speaker 2: that were maybe popular in the Middle Ages that are
29:00
Speaker 2: still kind of the order of the day. You know,
29:02
Speaker 2: the idea of regulating humors and stuff using techniques like
29:06
Speaker 2: blood letting or you know the the aforementioned you know,
29:10
Speaker 2: skull drilling or trepanation. So I mean any promise of
29:14
Speaker 2: like a cure that wouldn't require you to be bashed
29:17
Speaker 2: over the head with a mallet. You know, it was
29:19
Speaker 2: probably gonna be pretty attractive to the average you know consumer.
29:25
Speaker 6: So you guys want to know it would also be
29:26
Speaker 6: attractive hearing the story behind Ruth Chris's Steakhouse. So the
29:29
Speaker 6: story behind it is there was this guy named Chris
29:32
Speaker 6: who started a steakhouse in New Orleans and he kept
29:36
Speaker 6: selling it like he started the steakhouse, but he didn't
29:38
Speaker 6: really want to have it, so he sold it and
29:40
Speaker 6: he sold it in total six seven times, uh, buying
29:44
Speaker 6: it back six times because every time he sold it
29:46
Speaker 6: someone would run into the ground. But the seventh time
29:48
Speaker 6: he sold it, he sold it to this woman named
29:50
Speaker 6: Ruth Fortell, who then went on to own it for
29:54
Speaker 6: a very long time and thus became since it was
29:56
Speaker 6: Chris's Chris Steakhouse, it became Ruth Chris Steakhouse.
30:01
Speaker 1: I believe we have a two fer on Max with
30:04
Speaker 1: the facts.
30:07
Speaker 4: That seeking in the phone and peacefullen.
30:12
Speaker 2: Knowl it's just for you right now, and I feel
30:20
Speaker 2: dumber for knowing that.
30:22
Speaker 1: He kept selling it back.
30:25
Speaker 6: That's according to this article on the Hill, why is
30:29
Speaker 6: Ruth Chris Steakhouse called Ruth Chris publish?
30:33
Speaker 1: That's a reasonable question.
30:35
Speaker 2: It reminds me of like what happens with like a
30:37
Speaker 2: lot of you know, Asian restaurants when they like, you know,
30:39
Speaker 2: they'd be like.
30:39
Speaker 1: Put numbers on stuff, put numbers on them, or be
30:42
Speaker 1: like the new version or whatever. Where's trying to drag
30:45
Speaker 1: in one? Yeah, that was the good one.
30:47
Speaker 6: Also special thanks to Michael Bartiromo for writing this article.
30:51
Speaker 6: I want to make sure you give proper credit to Yeah.
30:54
Speaker 1: Sure. So here's the thing. Again, we might sound a
30:59
Speaker 1: bit like a broken rec but this is really important.
31:01
Speaker 1: Before nineteen oh six, you could put whatever you wanted
31:05
Speaker 1: in a bottle and sell it to whomever was dumb
31:08
Speaker 1: enough or desperate enough to buy it. Patent medicines didn't
31:13
Speaker 1: just not work. They often contain dangerous substances alcohol, opium,
31:18
Speaker 1: other narcotics, stuff that's addictive. And again, they didn't have
31:23
Speaker 1: to publish a list of ingredients. For instance, you could
31:28
Speaker 1: just say, hey, is your child too loud? Take doctor
31:35
Speaker 1: bon rouse Patented lithium of letha, you know what I mean.
31:39
Speaker 2: Quiet pills. That's something different. Check out stuff. I don't
31:43
Speaker 2: want you to know this episode on Lake City Quiet Pills.
31:46
Speaker 2: To figure out that you're right, Ben, and I also
31:49
Speaker 2: tend to wonder. I'm sure there are ways to test
31:52
Speaker 2: for the presence of certain substances, but like probably difficult
31:58
Speaker 2: at this point in science for them to be able
32:01
Speaker 2: to parse out exactly what was in something.
32:03
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
32:04
Speaker 2: You could probably say, okay, if I you know, drop
32:06
Speaker 2: this whatever substance into it, as I can detect the
32:08
Speaker 2: presence of alcohol, but probably not the same level of
32:12
Speaker 2: precision that they have today when it comes to testing
32:15
Speaker 2: for different materials, you know, So there was really no
32:18
Speaker 2: way to even call somebody on it. At the very least,
32:21
Speaker 2: you know, an average individual who might buy something like
32:23
Speaker 2: this and they would have no way of determining what
32:27
Speaker 2: was actually.
32:27
Speaker 1: In it or not. Literally, they would just run you
32:30
Speaker 1: out of town, right, So you had to You had
32:32
Speaker 1: to get while the getting was good. After you soldier stuff,
32:35
Speaker 1: you know, you would meet the guy you planted in
32:38
Speaker 1: the crowd at the crossroads outside of the town or
32:43
Speaker 1: city limits. He would hop in the wagon and you
32:46
Speaker 1: would be off to whatever is day's ride away.
32:50
Speaker 2: It reminds me of a scene in the excellent Paul
32:52
Speaker 2: Thomas Anderson movie The Master where the character played by
32:56
Speaker 2: Jaquin Phoenix somebody was named Freddie I can remember his
32:59
Speaker 2: last name, but he's in the military, and he his
33:02
Speaker 2: whole deal is he can make really good hoos out
33:05
Speaker 2: of like whatever's around, like usually involves like photographic chemicals.
33:09
Speaker 2: I think at one point he like steals some jet
33:12
Speaker 2: fuel and he's just getting you.
33:14
Speaker 1: Know, messed up out of his gourd on this stuff.
33:16
Speaker 2: And at one point I think he stays behind after
33:18
Speaker 2: being discharged from the service and he's living in this
33:20
Speaker 2: village like as a farmer, like an itinerant kind of farmer,
33:24
Speaker 2: and he gives some of this stuff to an old
33:25
Speaker 2: man who ends up dying and they chase him out
33:28
Speaker 2: of town literally, you know, run him out on a rail.
33:31
Speaker 2: This had to have happened to your point about you know,
33:33
Speaker 2: if someone was coming through town and they were selling
33:36
Speaker 2: some of this stuff and then somebody died, the only
33:38
Speaker 2: recourse was like pitchfork justice.
33:41
Speaker 1: You know exactly, tarring feathering run him out out a rail.
33:45
Speaker 1: It was a wild time. Back to our buddy Clark Stanley,
33:55
Speaker 1: the Rattle State King. The reason we're talking about patent
33:58
Speaker 1: medicine is because it's important to know he was just
34:01
Speaker 1: one of many, many flim flam artists out there, but
34:06
Speaker 1: he had a national breakthrough at the eighteen ninety three
34:10
Speaker 1: Worlds Exposition in Chicago. He did a really gross ted talk.
34:16
Speaker 1: He took a live snake, he cut it in front
34:20
Speaker 1: of the onlookers. That was his spectacle, that was his
34:23
Speaker 1: medicine show. And there's a great description of this by
34:27
Speaker 1: a guy named Joe Schwartz, director of McGill University's Office
34:31
Speaker 1: for Science and Society. It really puts us in the moment. Noel,
34:35
Speaker 1: would you be okay with performing this quote in Max?
34:38
Speaker 1: Could we get some cool music? Ben? I'm honored, thank you, Okay,
34:44
Speaker 1: let's get.
34:46
Speaker 7: Stanley reached into a sack, plucked out a snake, slit
34:50
Speaker 7: it open, and plunged it into boiling water. When the
34:53
Speaker 7: fat rose to the top, he skimmed it off and
34:56
Speaker 7: used it on the spot to create stan Lee's snakel
35:00
Speaker 7: a liniment that was immediately snapped up by the throng
35:04
Speaker 7: that had gathered.
35:05
Speaker 1: To watch the spectacle. Yeah, I love the idea. I
35:11
Speaker 1: love a good throng, yeah yeah. And eviscerating the snake
35:17
Speaker 1: live in front of a crowd was a great way
35:20
Speaker 1: to sell things. Medicine shows were all about spectacle, and
35:24
Speaker 1: at this point I'm persuaded, you guys, we should do
35:26
Speaker 1: an episode on medicine show.
35:27
Speaker 2: Wait wait, but before we Yeah, definitely, But is it
35:31
Speaker 2: what it sounds like? I guess in my mind, I
35:32
Speaker 2: always think of a medicine show as being like literally
35:34
Speaker 2: kind of a traveling variety show. But wasn't was the
35:37
Speaker 2: purpose of it to pedal some of these types of
35:40
Speaker 2: weird cure alls.
35:42
Speaker 1: They were a part of it. Yeah, they were a
35:44
Speaker 1: part of it, Like you're right with a variety show there,
35:47
Speaker 1: but there was medicine involved, you know. So this guy
35:51
Speaker 1: Stanley brilliant marketing, even though he's probably a very bad person.
35:56
Speaker 1: He sells this snake oil liniment all the way up
35:59
Speaker 1: until nineteen sixteen. He makes a lot of money. He's
36:02
Speaker 1: going gangbusters with it. The problem is there are two
36:07
Speaker 1: big issues with Stanley's snake oil. First, we have to mention,
36:14
Speaker 1: even if you believe everything Stanley says, rattle snake oil
36:19
Speaker 1: is way less effective than that Chinese water snake oil
36:23
Speaker 1: it was trying to emulate. Chinese water snake oil contained
36:28
Speaker 1: almost triple the amounts of the Mega three's the vital
36:32
Speaker 1: acids as rattlesnake oil. But that's not even the big problem.
36:37
Speaker 1: The big problem is Stanley snake oil did not have
36:42
Speaker 1: any snake oil in it, right.
36:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, that was sort of I think both
36:48
Speaker 2: of our the conjecture there at the top, where it's like,
36:51
Speaker 2: you know, what, what if I just slapped a label
36:54
Speaker 2: on it saying that it had the thing and it
36:56
Speaker 2: didn't have any of the thing, and that makes it
36:57
Speaker 2: a hell of a lot easier for.
36:58
Speaker 1: Me, you know.
36:59
Speaker 2: And then well then it all revolves around showmanship. It
37:03
Speaker 2: all revolves around the sales pitch, you know, because again
37:07
Speaker 2: there's zero accountability for these folks. And by the way,
37:10
Speaker 2: I was just googling medicine show just to get a sense,
37:13
Speaker 2: you know, all amazing posters that you can find that
37:15
Speaker 2: are associated with some beautiful and this one here is
37:18
Speaker 2: called Hamlin's Wizard Oil, the great medical wonder.
37:22
Speaker 1: There is no sword. It will not heal, no pain,
37:24
Speaker 1: it will not subdu Let's not forget. Let's not forget it.
37:27
Speaker 2: Second on the poster, like the opening act, Hamlin's cough
37:31
Speaker 2: Balsam pleasant to take, magical in its effects.
37:35
Speaker 6: Then what you're saying is the only thing less effective
37:39
Speaker 6: than snake oil is not snake oil.
37:42
Speaker 1: Yes, Someway, Yes, Max, that is unfortunately true. These start
37:48
Speaker 1: to go sideways for our boy Clark in the early
37:51
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds because of something called the Pure Food and
37:55
Speaker 1: Drug Act of nineteen oh six.
37:57
Speaker 2: Thank god, by the way, finally we're here a little
38:01
Speaker 2: bit of accountability. I think didn't The Jungle have something
38:04
Speaker 2: to do with this? That book, Upton Sinclair? Finally people
38:07
Speaker 2: were aware of how disgusting and crooked like, you know,
38:11
Speaker 2: a lot of industrial processes were around things that were
38:15
Speaker 2: being consumed by Americans every day.
38:17
Speaker 1: The Jungle is an excellent book. If you have not
38:21
Speaker 1: read it yet, please do. I know that sometimes books
38:25
Speaker 1: from that period of time they get unfairly called, you know,
38:30
Speaker 1: difficult to read or something. But Upton Sinclair writes in
38:34
Speaker 1: a very lucid, very readable style. And The Jungle did
38:39
Speaker 1: change the course of US history.
38:41
Speaker 2: And he was a real not agitator. That sounds an
38:45
Speaker 2: outdated world, but he was a political figure he had
38:48
Speaker 2: like serious yeah.
38:50
Speaker 1: Yeah.
38:50
Speaker 2: He was a big force in speaking truth to power
38:54
Speaker 2: and like, you know, holding people accountable for their misdeeds.
38:58
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, he would rake that muck for sure. And
39:02
Speaker 1: so Uncle Sam seizes a shipment of Stanley's snake oil
39:08
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventeen, and the FEDS say, hang on a tick,
39:12
Speaker 1: this has mineral oil. It has some kind of fatty
39:17
Speaker 1: oil from an animal, but this is definitely beef and
39:20
Speaker 1: then as turpentine and red pepper. So as they're examining
39:26
Speaker 1: his product, they find it has no snake oil, no
39:29
Speaker 1: provable medicinal properties, and they eventually find Charles Stanley drum
39:36
Speaker 1: roll please, twenty dollars. That's that's about five hundred bucks today. Yeah,
39:44
Speaker 1: that's that's the old slap on the wrist there. I
39:47
Speaker 1: wonder if you add the hot pepper just to make
39:49
Speaker 1: people give give a sense of that snaky bite, you know,
39:51
Speaker 1: this is the snakiness of it all. Yeah, yeah, right,
39:54
Speaker 1: I taste the rattlesnak taste the venom. So we haven't
39:58
Speaker 1: even got right.
39:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know we're gonna get into this, and I
40:01
Speaker 2: think it's really interesting. But the idea of like when
40:04
Speaker 2: we're talking about these poisonous snakes and they're oil. Venom
40:08
Speaker 2: hasn't really entered into the conversation at all. But that's
40:11
Speaker 2: a whole other thing, right, the idea of like anti
40:13
Speaker 2: venom and using that to treat people with snake bite
40:17
Speaker 2: or to like prevent people from getting ill, you know,
40:19
Speaker 2: when they're when they're actually.
40:21
Speaker 1: Infected with the venom. Well, I'm sorry, we'll get to that.
40:23
Speaker 2: But that red pepper thing got me because that's like,
40:26
Speaker 2: that's what they want you to think. It's like they
40:28
Speaker 2: also I think there probably was a bit of a
40:31
Speaker 2: bravado involved in it. The sales pits like, oh, I'm
40:35
Speaker 2: drinking the snake juice, you know, like I'm a big
40:39
Speaker 2: tough man.
40:39
Speaker 1: It's like drinking it's like drinking those spirits where they have,
40:44
Speaker 1: you know, a worm in the bottle of tequila or
40:47
Speaker 1: a snake in liquor, which I've tried. Have you guys
40:52
Speaker 1: ever eaten steaks? I've had.
40:54
Speaker 2: I have had like snake you know, nuggets or something
40:58
Speaker 2: like that, you know, like probably jerky form sure, and
41:02
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure I've had some like rattlesnake jerky.
41:05
Speaker 1: It's good.
41:05
Speaker 2: It's kind of gamey and it's got a nice like
41:07
Speaker 2: snap to it. But I feel like when I've had
41:09
Speaker 2: snake in fried kind of nugget for him, it sort
41:13
Speaker 2: of tastes like chicken anything that's fair.
41:17
Speaker 1: What about you? Max? What about you?
41:19
Speaker 6: At first, I was gonna say no, I don't think
41:20
Speaker 6: I have it. As soon as Noel said Jerky, I'm like, oh,
41:23
Speaker 6: you know what? That rings a bell. I cannot think
41:25
Speaker 6: of like a specific time I've had it, But I'm
41:27
Speaker 6: I mean, I don't know. I think it's been discussed
41:29
Speaker 6: on here, and we did our cricket episode a couple
41:31
Speaker 6: of years ago. I'll pretty much eat anything.
41:34
Speaker 1: Uh huh, old snake, snake Jerky Williams, they call him
41:39
Speaker 1: out in Oklahoma.
41:40
Speaker 5: Let's get Max with the facts.
41:41
Speaker 1: Right there.
41:43
Speaker 4: Is that sneaking in the phone, and he's fallen. Know
41:49
Speaker 4: it's just for you right now here with the fat.
41:56
Speaker 1: Oh man? All right? Okay, So we have to admit
42:01
Speaker 1: people probably did die as a result of this quackery.
42:05
Speaker 1: While the potion itself may not have poisoned them, it
42:09
Speaker 1: definitely did not help with whatever maladies they suffered from.
42:13
Speaker 1: And at this point, there is zero evidence that Clark
42:16
Speaker 1: Stanley himself believed in what he sold. This was definitely
42:21
Speaker 1: a grift, and the outrage of the American public over
42:25
Speaker 1: Stanley snake Oil led to better regulation for American consumers.
42:30
Speaker 1: People from every imaginable demographic except for snake oil salesman said, Hey,
42:37
Speaker 1: you know what, we should be able to trust that
42:42
Speaker 1: the stuff we buy is you know what we thought
42:45
Speaker 1: we were buying. And I love that you mentioned Upton
42:48
Speaker 1: Sinclair that book specifically about stockyards. And there's another author
42:55
Speaker 1: around the same time, a writer named Samuel Hopkins Adams,
42:59
Speaker 1: who does a lot of muck raking on the dirty,
43:04
Speaker 1: dirty business of patent medicine manufacturers.
43:08
Speaker 2: Not to mention our buddy Teddy Roosevelt. Really, you know,
43:13
Speaker 2: we know him as like a bit of a naturalist,
43:15
Speaker 2: and so he rides rough Yeah, he's a rough He's
43:18
Speaker 2: a rough rider. He can't deny it. You don't want
43:21
Speaker 2: to f with him, You just don't want to. On
43:24
Speaker 2: June thirtieth, nineteen oh six, he was responsible for signing
43:28
Speaker 2: into law the Federal Food and Drug Act, which was
43:32
Speaker 2: then amended in nineteen twelve and strengthened created turned into
43:37
Speaker 2: rather the even more powerful and actionable Food, Drug and
43:43
Speaker 2: Cosmetic Act, which was passed in nineteen thirty eight. This
43:48
Speaker 2: required extensive labeling to include lists of ingredients and also
43:53
Speaker 2: for four manufacturers of these types of products, And it
43:56
Speaker 2: also prohibited manufacturers from making faults and or miss leading claims.
44:01
Speaker 2: And as we know, when these kinds of laws happen,
44:03
Speaker 2: it's like people find loopholes. They always have to kind
44:06
Speaker 2: of be adjusted and you have to sort of keep
44:09
Speaker 2: after folksuse everyone's going to kind of try their best
44:11
Speaker 2: to get around it. But these were meaningful changes, wouldn't
44:14
Speaker 2: you say, Ben? At this point, yes, one hundred percent.
44:18
Speaker 2: It sounds crazy to realize that there had to be
44:21
Speaker 2: federal legislation just to get ingredients on products, and it's
44:26
Speaker 2: incredibly important. The law required not a full ingredient list
44:31
Speaker 2: at first. It just said, hey, if you have.
44:35
Speaker 1: The following things in your product, you have to put
44:40
Speaker 1: it on the label. What kind of substances alcohol, morphine, opium, cocaine, heroine,
44:46
Speaker 1: something called ukin which I wasn't familiar with, chloroform, cannabis
44:51
Speaker 1: or acetanylide or chloral hydrate, a bunch of you know, addictive,
44:56
Speaker 1: dangerous stuff. They were basically saying, if people are giving
45:01
Speaker 1: their children opium or laudanum. They should know. I feel
45:07
Speaker 1: like that's very reasonable. Oh definitely.
45:10
Speaker 6: Also, ukine is a drug that was previously used as
45:14
Speaker 6: a local.
45:15
Speaker 1: Anesthetic, yeah, like lynacane you know right right sign.
45:18
Speaker 6: As an analog of cocaine, and it was one of
45:21
Speaker 6: the first synthetic chemical compounds to find general use as
45:25
Speaker 6: an anesthetic, of course, going from Wikipedia right here.
45:28
Speaker 1: Well, of course it's interesting that with cocaine.
45:29
Speaker 2: You know, we know how prevalent that was in all
45:32
Speaker 2: kinds of products, you know, even down to like coca cola.
45:35
Speaker 1: Classic that's what that's the classic stands for it, I
45:37
Speaker 1: mean cocaine.
45:38
Speaker 6: Cocaine and cocaine similar things had been used for a
45:41
Speaker 6: long time.
45:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, like well generally anesthetic too, like because I mean
45:45
Speaker 2: then you found, you know, in some of our tangents
45:48
Speaker 2: and trivia sections can be some of the most fun
45:50
Speaker 2: bits of these episodes that cocaine was actually used, Like
45:53
Speaker 2: it could be rubbed onto the eye like to make
45:57
Speaker 2: it like kind of still movable, like ill mobile, but
46:01
Speaker 2: also it would like allow you to it would numb pain,
46:05
Speaker 2: you know, kind of in and around that area in
46:06
Speaker 2: case some surgery, but it wouldn't paralyze the thing, you know.
46:12
Speaker 2: And then, of course, as we know, I mean, pharmaceutical
46:15
Speaker 2: grades of a lot of these drugs were widely available
46:18
Speaker 2: for a very long time, not only in products that
46:22
Speaker 2: maybe it wasn't clear if that's what was in it,
46:24
Speaker 2: but also just on their own. You could go down
46:26
Speaker 2: the street and get like, you know, heroin, You could
46:29
Speaker 2: get heroin at the pharmacy with I believe, without a prescription.
46:33
Speaker 1: Yes, that's correct. And it wasn't until nineteen thirty eight
46:38
Speaker 1: that the US government required all ingredients to be listed
46:43
Speaker 1: on products. This was the direct result of the brujaja
46:46
Speaker 1: surrounding Clark Stanley and Stanley's snake oil. People back then
46:51
Speaker 1: were just as smart as people are today. They worked
46:54
Speaker 1: with the info they had, But desperation breeds all kinds
46:58
Speaker 1: of strange beliefs. So it's surprised that this kind of
47:01
Speaker 1: quack medicine continues in the modern day. I love that
47:05
Speaker 1: you mentioned anti venom. I think it's a very uncreative name,
47:10
Speaker 1: but it's it's nuts anti matter, right, right, What is this, Well,
47:15
Speaker 1: it's not matter, so it's definitely not venom. Is the
47:20
Speaker 1: thing you need to know. The way it works is
47:22
Speaker 1: you inject a mammal like a sheep, for instance, with
47:26
Speaker 1: snake venom, hope the sheep survives and then harvest the
47:30
Speaker 1: antibodies it produces.
47:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the same sort of concept as the vaccine
47:35
Speaker 2: you like, and you take a little bit of the
47:37
Speaker 2: of the virus and it causes your body to produce
47:40
Speaker 2: these antibodies, right.
47:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, antibodies as well. What is this? It's not
47:45
Speaker 1: a body, the opposite basically, And with that we are
47:51
Speaker 1: gonna have to call it a day, Nol. I think
47:54
Speaker 1: both of us are kind of sad about this because
47:57
Speaker 1: it's pretty obvious that we're in love with the ridiculous
48:01
Speaker 1: aspects of medicine shows and crazy patent remedies.
48:05
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I'm sure some of these were events
48:09
Speaker 2: to behold, you know, like with all the picking and
48:12
Speaker 2: grinning and all of that stuff. Probably some warsh tub
48:14
Speaker 2: bas being played, you know, the old thing with the
48:18
Speaker 2: with the.
48:19
Speaker 1: Spoons and all of that. Yeah, but you're right, I mean,
48:21
Speaker 1: it's it is.
48:22
Speaker 2: It's not that much different than modern day music festivals
48:25
Speaker 2: that are sponsored by like Red Bull, you know. I mean,
48:27
Speaker 2: this is like the medicine was the reason for the event.
48:31
Speaker 2: The music was just sort of ancillary to get people
48:34
Speaker 2: to hang out so they would like buy the product.
48:36
Speaker 2: And now it's like with these music festivals, it's all
48:39
Speaker 2: just at marketing. Man, it's all just advertising, you know,
48:42
Speaker 2: like to get you to buy your thirty five dollars
48:46
Speaker 2: Red Bull and Tito's in a special cup.
48:49
Speaker 1: Do you uh? Do you know what? Handboning is?
48:53
Speaker 2: Kind of like spoons, but without spoons, spoons with just
48:56
Speaker 2: like yeah, like slapping your exactly.
49:01
Speaker 1: Let me show him not doing a very good job.
49:02
Speaker 1: You know you're doing a great job. Max. I don't
49:04
Speaker 1: know if we're going to use this audio, but just
49:06
Speaker 1: before he wrapped today, I've got to show you my
49:10
Speaker 1: one of my favorite hamdboning videos. I'm the hamd bonist
49:15
Speaker 1: in the group. You're not sure what that is. It's
49:20
Speaker 1: a person who practices hand boning. And when I started
49:23
Speaker 1: this way back a long time ago. We don't need
49:25
Speaker 1: the preface here, boner to take a couple of minutes,
49:31
Speaker 1: he described the scene here, Well, he kind of looks
49:33
Speaker 1: like a member of the Grateful Dead.
49:35
Speaker 2: He's seated in a okay, he's sort of slapping his
49:39
Speaker 2: yeah here all here, How can I not.
49:40
Speaker 1: He's got he's got a bunch of people sitting around
49:43
Speaker 1: in a circle and they're watching him rhythmically slap his
49:49
Speaker 1: will thighs.
49:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's sort of slapping both the inner and outer
49:52
Speaker 2: portion of his legs and alternating back and forth. And
49:56
Speaker 2: now he's doing a windmill kind of move. Yeah, he's
49:59
Speaker 2: really bringing the heat. Yeah, I let it. Steve Hickman
50:02
Speaker 2: hamd Bonus. Yeah, it's also great he has a lot
50:05
Speaker 2: of oh wow. Yeah, he's got a lot.
50:08
Speaker 6: Of microphones around him to make sure he captures all
50:11
Speaker 6: of its.
50:12
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, I do want to point out this guy
50:15
Speaker 1: isn't very good. You don't think he's very good.
50:19
Speaker 2: I just think he could probably be rocking some more
50:21
Speaker 2: complex rhythms than this guy. And he sees he looks
50:24
Speaker 2: he's taking it so seriously, but I look at the
50:27
Speaker 2: little face.
50:29
Speaker 1: I just I just.
50:29
Speaker 2: Think, you know, like if I'm going to Cheez Louise,
50:32
Speaker 2: if I'm comparing this to like bucket drummers or something
50:34
Speaker 2: like that.
50:35
Speaker 1: This guy's not that he's not doing it for me, right.
50:38
Speaker 2: I appreciate like the craft and the visual part of it,
50:41
Speaker 2: but the rhythm part of it.
50:42
Speaker 1: Is just wow. I'm more interested in this spectacle that's
50:46
Speaker 1: what I mean.
50:47
Speaker 2: You're right, and that's why we were listening to it
50:49
Speaker 2: in an audio podcast. But I hope we did an
50:51
Speaker 2: okay job of describing it. Probably would have been some
50:53
Speaker 2: hamd bonis hanging out at these medicine shows, yo, one
50:56
Speaker 2: hundred percent.
50:57
Speaker 1: Yeah. And with that, we're going to we're going to
51:01
Speaker 1: head off to the dusty trail. We're onto another town
51:06
Speaker 1: to pedal our podcast wares. In the meantime, we want
51:11
Speaker 1: to thank everybody for tuning in. Thanks to all our
51:14
Speaker 1: ridiculous historians. Thanks to the medicine man, mister Max Williams.
51:19
Speaker 4: What kind of.
51:19
Speaker 1: Patent medicine with Jonathan Strickland pedal.
51:23
Speaker 5: Instant death, instant hair growth.
51:27
Speaker 1: Oh, come on, that's a little below the belt.
51:31
Speaker 5: Nothing's below the belt when it comes to the quistor.
51:33
Speaker 1: That's fair. Who else should we think? Oh?
51:36
Speaker 2: In I was obviously, we'll thank you, surprising the owners
51:37
Speaker 2: here in spirit he was Jeff co Uh you Ben,
51:40
Speaker 2: we already think Max.
51:42
Speaker 1: I think that that does it for the thank yous.
51:45
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time, folks.
51:53
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
51:57
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,