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Short Stuff: The Original Snake Oil Salesman · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're all thinking of
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Dave right now. So his ears are probably burning like
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: flames on the side of his face or in my throat. Yeah,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Chuck's got a little sore throat, but not really. What'd
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: you say, You've got some dust in your throat?
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: You know, when you just have a little coughing fit
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: because it feels like there's a tickle in your throat
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: you can't get rid of. Always call it.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: You sound like you're about to cough it.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Let's call it dust in my throat.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, that's a good description. Yeah. Also, we're going
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: to try to muddle through everybody.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: It's gonna say a great Time Waits album, but the
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: joke's dumb, so I'm not gonna say it.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Dust in my throat is great time. That was a
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: great chick.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: This one's fun.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: You dug this one up.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: We talked, have talked over the years a lot about
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: snake oil and what's called patent medicines, and this is
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: the origin story of snake oil.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it kind of ties into our episode we
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: just released on Meat and Food before the FDA came along. Yeah,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: So to quote the Oxford English diction, oh, snake oil
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: is quote a quack remedy or panacea. And essentially what
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: they're saying there, in high falutint terms, is that snake
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: oil is it's it's well, it's a quack remedy. It
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: doesn't actually work. It's something that's sold is a medicine
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: or a cure that that doesn't do anything like it says,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: and it just has a bad association. We think of
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: snake oil as just something you're something you're duped by,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: and the person you're duped by is a snake oil salesman.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: But this is one of those really interesting stories, Chuck,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: where there's an actual origin to this and as bad
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: as we think of snake oil today, like it actually
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: had a legitimate use back in the day and still
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: does depending on where you live.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's if you're literally talking oil from a snake,
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: and we're talking about in China, they would use Chinese
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: water snakes, venomous Chinese water snakes to get their literal extract,
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: you know, extract oil from the snake. And that oil
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: is very high in omega three fatty acids, which we
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: all know are very good for your health. So the
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: original snake oil, and you know, ancient China actually had
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: a use. It wasn't like this this bunk medicine. You know,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: it's good for your brain health, your heart health. I
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: think it can reduce inflammation, kind of like fish oil.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Everyone knows that omega three fatty acids are great, and
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: that was what the original snake oil was.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: It was so high or it is so high in
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: omega three fatty acids that it reduces inflammation if you
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: just rub it on your skin. It's just really potent stuff,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: which is pretty much the opposite of what we think
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: of a snake oil today, like not only does it
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: not really work, it's fake. Snake oil is original snake
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: oil is not fake. It was very potent. And in
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: the nineteenth century there were a lot of Chinese immigrants
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: who came over either by their own volition or as
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: indentured workers to work on the railroad, the Transcontinental Railroad
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: in particular, and they brought this snake oil with them
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: and it became like kind of a popular curative for
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: people when they wanted to relieve sore muscles or inflammation,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: and it caught the attention of one guy named Clark
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Stanley who became he was a cowboy, He was a
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: legit cowboy, but he became a patent medicine seller. And
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: you toss that word around, patent medicines, but there's an
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: actual explanation to how we got to where patent medicines
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: had this bad reputation. And it's in the name too.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because you could say, I have this medicine, I
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: want to patent it so only I can sell it.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: And part of having a patent can mean that you
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: don't have to tell what's in it, so you're you know,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: it's proprietary, so you can have your little secret recipe.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: And so patent medicines were where you know, they became
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: these medicines that was essentially snake oil. It's like, you know,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: who knows what could be in this stuff, and these
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: hucksters are selling it for you know, a quarter of bottle,
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: ten cents of bottle, fifty cents a bottle, as we'll see,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: which is like eighteen bucks today, and no one knows
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: what's in it. So that is where snake oil, well,
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: actually we're not quite there yet. That's what patent medicine was,
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: and maybe we should take a break then with that
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: cliffhanger about how snake oil as hucksterism came about.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: listen up to.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Chuck selfus shoe.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: So, Chuck, you left us off on the cliffhanger where
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: we were talking. Patent medicines were basically fraudulent and fake,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: and snake oil was about to enter the realm of
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: from legitimate medicine to fake patent medicine, and it did
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: so via that cowboy turned patent medicine seller Clark Stanley.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so he was around and he said, hey, these
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Chinese people are using this snake oil or they're you know,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: have stories of using this snake oil because they didn't
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: have those Chinese water snakes in the American West, of course,
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: but he heard these stories. He was into this patent
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: medicine thing, and he said, well, one thing we have
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: a lot about here is rattlesnakes. So I'm gonna well
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: we'll get to the little twist here in a second,
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  Speaker 2: but I'm going to make patent medicine, this snake oil
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  Speaker 2: liniment out of rattlesnakes. I'm gonna say I'm the rattlesnake King.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: I'm going to put out a little pamphlet to really
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: gussy up my story called the Life and Adventures of
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: the American Cowboy colon Life in the Far West in
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: eighteen ninety seven, And it's going to have horses and
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: cowboy poetry and like lasso throwing advice, and I'm gonna
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: include this with this snake oil. Gonna charge fifty cents
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: a bottle, which, like I said, was eighteen bucks today,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: and it's gonna cure almost anything you can think of.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He said that it was the strongest and best
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: liniment known for the cure of all pain and lameness,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: for rheumatism, neuralgias, sciatica, lay back lumbargo, contracted muscles, toothaches, sprain, swellings,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: et cetera, cure's frost bites, chill blades, bruises, sore throat,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: bites of animals, insects, and reptiles. That was on the label.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like the early medical marijuana places in California,
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Like can't sleep, try marijuana, too much sleep, try marijuana.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: So if you notice, though, this is like laying back,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: contracted muscles, like he's tying into the reputation that snake
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: oil already has. It's an anti inflammatory that you rub
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: on your skin, right, But he never gave credit to
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: the Chinese people who introduced him to snake oil or
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: who introduced it through the United States. He said that
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: he learned to make snake oil from rattlesnakes from years
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: of study with a hopey medicine man, and also because
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: he was a bit countless times by rattlesnakes, so I
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: guess that gave him some entree into it. The problem is,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: rattlesnake oil has about a third of the Omega three
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: fatty acids that oil from Chinese water snakes too, which
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: makes it about a third is potent.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then here's the real twist that we promised.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: He didn't even use rattlesnake oil, so even if he
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: was using it, it would have been, you know, far
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: less potent. But he wasn't even using that stuff, and
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: we know and this is how it ties into the
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: episode from yesterday. Because of the Pure Food and Drug
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Act of nineteen oh six. In that episode yesterday, we
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: talked about one of the things they did was a
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: big crackdown on patent medicine. So he was exposed and
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: they tested his snake oil in nineteen seventeen and had
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: beef fat, red pepper mineral oil, a little bit of
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: camp for and a little bit of turpentine.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. That was what was in Stanley's snak
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: oil linament, nonake oil. He got caught red handed, and
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: he knew he was caught red handed. This new FDA
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: or I don't even think it was the FDA yet
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: they busted him and so for decades of selling fake medicine,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: he was fined twenty dollars, yeah, which is less than
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: five hundred dollars today.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: And that was that.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: But the thing is is he single handedly gave snake
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: oil a bad name, like it was him. He was
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: the conduit through which snake oil turned legitimate. To this
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: umbrella term, this catch all term for any kind of fake,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: fraudulent medicine, or any time somebody's trying to sell you
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: something that's not real or just kind of hustling you,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: that's snake oil. So by a snake oil salesman and
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: our friends at code switch to have found the first
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: use of snake oil is kind of a catch all
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: term to deride all patent medicines in that one.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was about ten years afterward. It was ten
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: years after Clark Stanley was busted. In nineteen twenty seven
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: a poem by Stephen Vincent Bennet called John Brown's Body,
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: which is I think fairly famous. Right, I've heard of that,
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: haven't I.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: That's where we get that John Brown's body lies a
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: moldering in the grape. Oh okay, but that's like two
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: lines of this almost book length epic poem that it's from. Yeah.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: One of the lines as well was Sellers of Snake Oil,
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: bomb and Lucky Rings. And then also in nineteen fifty six,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: it was in the very famous play The Iceman Cometh
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: from Eugene O'Neill.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, so one character says that someone else another
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: character is quote standing on a street corner in hell
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: right now, making suckers of the damned, telling them there's
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: nothing like snake oil for a bad burn.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Amazing.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: That's classic Eugene O'Neil. So that's it. That's where snake
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: oil came from, or that's where snake oil's bad reputation
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: came from. And you can thank Clark Stanley for it
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: or blame them if you're a snake oil manufacturer.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I love this because I'm sure we'll talk
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: about snake oil again and then we can reference Clark Stanley.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, Chuck. And since I said for sure,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: everybody and I don't think either of us have anything
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: more about snake oil. Short stuff is accurt. Stuff You
• 10:26
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• 10:30
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• 10:33
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