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

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

There’s a great origin story behind snake oil salesmen, and it has to do with just one guy who singlehandedly gave it a bad name.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A small town with secrets hidden for centuries. You turn up in Danville just as the town sees its first real crime in decades? And a curious stranger who may be their only chance for survival. I'm talking about the murder and disappearance in small town New Hampshire. What do you think? This is Consumed, an all new supernatural audio thriller inspired by the novel by Aaron Manke. I did not wake up this morning prepared to deal with forces beyond my understanding. Please, I call that breakfast.

Listen to consumed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And we're all thinking of Dave right now. So his ears are probably burning like flames on the side of his face Or in my throat Yeah, Chuck's got a little sore throat, but not really what you say you've got some dust in your throat You know when you just have a little coughing fit because it feels like there's a tickle in your throat

You can't get rid of Always call it. You sound like you're about to cough right now. I always call it dust in my throat. Sure. Yeah, that's a good description. Yeah, also. We're gonna try to muddle through everybody. I was gonna say a great Tom Waits album,

but the joke's dumb, so I'm not gonna say it. Dust in my throat is great Tom Waits. That was a great joke. This one's fun. You dug this one up. We have talked over the years a lot about snake oil and what's called patent medicines. And this is the origin story of snake oil.

Yeah, and it kind of ties into our episode we just released on meat and food before the FDA came along. Huh? Yeah. So to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, snake oil oil is quote a quack remedy or panacea. And essentially what they're saying there in highfalutin terms is that snake oil is, it's, it's, well, it's a quack remedy. It doesn't actually work. It's something that's sold as a medicine or a cure that doesn't do anything like it says. And it just has a bad association. We think of snake oil as just something you're duped by, and the person you're duped by is a

snake oil salesman. But this is one of those really interesting stories, Chuck, where there's an actual origin to this. And as bad as we think of snake oil today, like they actually had a legitimate use back in the day and still does depending on where you live. Yeah. And that's if you're literally talking oil from a snake. We're talking about in China, they would use Chinese water snakes, venomous Chinese water snakes to get their literal extract, you know, extract oil from the snake. And that oil is very high in omega-3 fatty acids, which we all know are very good for

your health. So, the original snake oil in, you know, ancient China actually had a use. It wasn't like this bunk medicine, you know, it's good for your brain health, your heart health. I think it can reduce inflammation, kind of like fish oil. Everyone knows that omega-3 fatty acids are great, and that was what the original snake oil was. It was so high, or it is so high in omega-3 fatty acids, that it reduces inflammation

if you just rub it on your skin. It's just really potent stuff, which is pretty much the opposite of what we think of a snake oil today. Like not only does it not really work, it's fake snake oils. Original snake oil was not fake, it was very potent. And in the 19th century, there were a lot of Chinese immigrants

who came over either by their own volition or as indentured workers to work on the railroad, the transcontinental railroad in particular. And they brought this snake oil with them, and it became like kind of a popular curative for people when they wanted to like relieve sore muscles or inflammation. And it caught the attention of one guy named Clark Stanley, who became a, he was a cowboy, he was a legit cowboy, but he became a patent medicine seller. And you toss that word around patent medicines, but there's an actual like explanation to how we got to where patent medicines

had this bad reputation and it's in the name too. Yeah, because you could say, I have this medicine, I wanna patent it so only I can sell it. And part of having a patent can mean that you don't have to tell what's in it. So, you know, it's proprietary so you can have your little secret recipe. And so patent medicines were, you know, they became these medicines that was essentially snake oils like, you know, who knows what could be in this stuff. And these Huxters are selling it for, you know, who knows what could be in this stuff and these hucksters are selling it

For you know a quarter of a bottle ten cents a bottle fifty cents a bottle as we'll see which is like 18 bucks today And no one knows what's in it. So that is where snake oil. Well, actually we're not quite there yet That's what patent medicine was And maybe we should take a break then with that cliffhanger about how snake oil as Huxterism came about. One of the best shows of the year, according to Apple, Amazon and Time, is back for another round. We have more insightful conversations between myself, Paul Muldoon and Paul McCartney about his life and career. We had a big bear of a land, it's called Maladins he was on the movie, and he was coming back on the plane and he said will you pass the salt and pepper? And I miss her. I said what? It's actually bad.

This season we're diving deep into some of McCartney's most beloved songs. Yesterday, Band on the Run, Hey Jude, and McCartney's favourite song in his entire catalog, here, there, and everywhere. Listen to season two of McCartney, A Life in Lyrics on the iHeart radio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 911, what's your emergency? You have to send someone. What's going on? Whatever it is, that's our entire emergency force on the way somewhere.

They're saying there's a body in the woods. Excuse me, I don't seem to recognize you. Um, that's because I'm not from here. A small town stuck in the past. There's only one cell tower and currently it's out of order. With secrets hidden for centuries. We hear things, you know. When they whisper, or when they think they're alone.

And a curious stranger who may be their only chance for survival. I'm talking about the murder and disappearance in small town New Hampshire. What do you think? Sorry, have you ever listened to a single true crime podcast? You turn up in Danville just as the town sees its first real crime in decades? This is Consumed, an all-new supernatural audio thriller inspired by the novel by Aaron Mankey. I did not wake up this morning preparing to deal with forces beyond my understanding.

Please, I call that breakfast. Listen to Consumed on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know. So Chuck, you left us off on a cliffhanger where we were talking Pat medicines were basically fraudulent and fake. And snake oil was about to enter the realm of from legitimate cliffhanger where we were talking patent medicines were basically fraudulent and fake and snake

oil was about to enter the realm of from legitimate medicine to fake patent medicine. And it did so via that cowboy turned patent medicine seller Clark Stanley. Yeah. So he was around and he said, hey, these Chinese people are using this snake oil or they're, you know, have have stories of using this snake oil because they didn't have those Chinese water snakes in the American West, of course. But he heard these stories. He was into this patent medicine thing and he said, well, one thing we have a lot about here is rattlesnakes.

So I'm going to – well, we'll get to the little twist here in a second. But I'm going to make a patent medicine, this snake oil liniment out of rattlesnakes. I'm gonna say I'm the rattlesnake king. I'm gonna put out a little pamphlet to really gussie up my story called The Life and Adventures of the American Cowboy, colon life in the far west in 1897.

And it's gonna have horses and cowboy poetry and like lasso throwing advice. And I'm gonna include this with this snake oil. I'm gonna charge 50 cents a bottle, which like I said, was 18 bucks today. And it's gonna cure almost anything you can think of. Yeah, he said that it was the strongest and best liniment known for the cure of all pain and lameness.

For rheumatism, neuralgia, sciatica, lame back, lumbago, contracted muscles, toothaches, sprains, swellings, et cetera. C rheumatism, neuralgia, sciatica, lame back, lumbago, contracted muscles, toothaches, sprains, swellings, et cetera, cures frostbites, chill blanes, bruises, sore throat, bites of animals, insects and reptiles. That was on the label. Yeah, it was like the early medical marijuana places in California.

Yeah. They're like, can't sleep? Try marijuana. Too much sleep? Try marijuana. Too much sleep? Try marijuana. So if you notice though, this is like laying back contracted muscles. It like it's tying into the the reputation that snake oil already has is an anti-inflammatory that you rub on your skin, right? But he never gave credit to the Chinese people who introduced him to Snake oil or who introduced it to the United States

He said that he learned to make snake oil from rattlesnakes from years of study with a Hopi medicine man And also because he was bit countless times by rattlesnakes. So I guess that gave him some Entree into it. The problem is rattlesnake oil has about a third of the omega three fatty acids that oil from Chinese water snakes do, which makes it about a third as potent. Yeah. And then here's the real twist that we promised. He didn't even use rattlesnake oil.

So even if he was using it, it would have been, you know, far less potent, but he wasn't even using that stuff. And we know, and this is how it ties into the episode from yesterday, because of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 in that episode yesterday, we talked about one of the things they did was a big crackdown on patent medicine. So he was exposed and they tested his snake oil in 1917 and it had beef fat, red pepper, mineral oil, a little bit of camphor and a little bit of turpentine. Yeah, that's it. That was what was in Stanley's, um, the stink oil lundament. No snake oil. He got caught red-handed and

he knew it was caught red-handed. This new FDA, or I don't even think it was the FDA yet. They busted him. And so for decades of selling fake medicine, he was fined $20, which is less than $500 today. And that was that. But the thing is, is he single-handedly gave snake oil a bad name. Like it was him. He was the conduit through which snake oil turned legitimate to this Umbrella term this catch-all term for any kind of fake fraudulent medicine or any any time somebody's trying to sell you something That's not real or just kind of hustling you that snake oil So by a snake oil salesman and our friends at code switch seemed to have found the first

And our friends at Code Switch seem to have found the first use of snake oil as kind of a catch-all term to deride all patent medicines in that way. Yeah, it was about 10 years afterward. It was in 19- or 10 years after Clark Stanley was busted in 1927, a poem by Stephen Vincent Benet called John Brown's Body, which is, I think, fairly famous, right? I've heard of that, haven't I? That's where we get that John Brown's body lies, a molder in the grave. Oh, okay. But that's like two lines of this almost book length epic poem that it's from. Yeah, one of the lines as well was, sellers of snake oil bomb and Lucky Rings.

And then also in 1956, it was in the very famous play, The Iceman, come a from Eugene O'Neill, right? Yeah, so one character says that someone else, another character is, quote, standing on a street corner in hell right now, making suckers of the damned, telling them there's nothing like snake oil for a bad burn. Amazing.

That's classic Eugene O'Neill. So that's it. That's where snake oil came from or that's where snake oil's bad reputation came from and you can thank Clark Stanley for it Or blame them if you're a snake oil manufacturer. Yeah, and I love this because I'm sure we'll talk about snake oil again And then we can reference Clark Stanley. Yeah for sure Chuck And since I said for sure everybody and I don't think either of us have anything more about snake oil short stuff is after you. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

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