July 4, 2023 • 52 mins
Nowadays, "snake oil" usually means a fake medicine or treatment that claims -- with no evidence -- to cure any number of medical conditions. But where did this term come from? In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive into the story of Clark Stanley, the Rattlesnake King who (accidentally) helped create the modern FDA.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for our number one
medicine man super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Because I only did the booze so I could do
the hiss, because the hiss it's just topic appropriate.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
And hiss doesn't make sense, you know, without the boo. Yeah,
it's just what do we cat people?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
You need the boo followed by the hiss. If everyone
were to hiss first, I would immediately not take them seriously.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
It sounds like you're booing your own hiss exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
It's all about decorum here when it comes to nagging
people in public.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Your Noel, I'm Ben, and today our booze and our
hisses are appropriate because we're talking about something that's a
little bit etymology, it's a little bit marketing. It is
one hundred percent ridiculous, Noel. We are exploring snake oil.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, snake oil like as a concept, as an actual
thing that legitimately existed. Like, let's think of the you know,
I think maybe a lot of people's first experience with
the idea of a traveling snake oil salesman was probably
in The Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
In the original Wizard of Oz with the guy whatever.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
His name was, you know who in the black and
white version ends up being the I guess when Dorothy's
having her psychotic break and all the little details are
kaiser sozeing their way into her brain. That guy rep
since the Wizard of Oz, but he travels around in
a caravan that has a sign something marvelous. I believe
it has the word marvelous in it, and he sells
(02:08):
like tonics and stuff, you know, and like remedies, things
purported to be cure all's cure some perhaps panaceas your
mileage may vary, caveat em thor and so on.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
I love to use the word remedy because I know
it is a very dangerous time in history. But I
miss the days when you could just put any stupid,
possibly dangerous thing in a bottle, slap a label on
it that said remedy and some high faluting esoteric language,
and people would buy it. That's like that's snake oil, right,
(02:44):
some kind of fake treatment or cure, a way to
fix a condition that modern medicine just can't combat. You
see it all the time, right, like bad skin, baldness, cancer,
genetic diseases, what else?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Oh man, I mean you name it basically, but I
do want to issue a quick correction for what I said.
It was a Professor Marvel, which is cool because that
sounds very.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Much like a comic book character.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I mean, obviously we have Captain Marvel in the in
the Marvel Cinematic and comic book universe. But he wasn't
selling He necessarily wasn't necessarily selling products like that. He
was more of a fortune teller, acclaimed by the crowned
heads of Europe itself. Let him read your past, present
and future in his crystal. But the vehicle and the
(03:37):
wagon that he's riding around in is exactly the same
as those made famous by these very shady individuals, you know,
roaming the countryside or whatever in you know, maybe days
of great depression and beyond, trying to sell hapless individuals
on some kind of thing that would maybe cure what
(03:58):
ailed them, but probably can nothing but mineral spirits.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, Better Business Bureau loves these guys. Kidding. BBB wasn't around,
But I know you said something really interesting. I think
maybe we start there. Snake oil, although now it means
any cure treatment that falsely promises extraordinary results, is and
was a real thing in other cultures. Like let's go,
(04:23):
let's journey back to the days of ancient Chinese traditional medicine.
They used water snakes or oil from water snakes as
a treatment for joint pain. And I don't know, I
think we all have in the West such an association
with snake oil as a term for con artists, that
(04:44):
we kind of forget the legitimate attempts that humanity has
had using snake oil. Like it goes all the way
back to the seventeen hundreds, I think is the first
time the phrase is used in print.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
And Old Webster in his famous Dictionary does point out,
as you said, Ben, the first printed use of snake
oil appears in the early seventeen hundreds. But again with
examples from you know, ancient historian, ancient Roman historian Pliny
the Elder, we have examples dating as far back as
the early to mid sixteen hundreds referring to specific combinations
(05:23):
of the snake juice, you know, being ground and beaten
and strained into something that did seem to be helpful
to some degree. I think maybe my favorite one is
this longer one from John French from the Art of Distillation.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Ben, I believe you found this one. This is great.
Oh yeah, this is okay. So before we do this,
when everybody needs to know that it is written in
an older kind of tone. That's why it's cool, right.
So the oil of snakes and Adams. Take snakes us
(06:00):
when they are fat, which will be in June or July,
cut off their heads and take off their skins and
unbowel them and put them in a glass gord. Uh no,
why you take the.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Rest of this Well, first of all, let's let's just
unback a little bit of this work a glass gourd.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
What does that just mean? A jar basically? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
it was uh yeah, it was a glass. It was
like a mason jar.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, maybe one of those heavy like a heavy mason jar, right.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
And then you have unbowel, which does make sense, you know,
because you know, to how does one bowel something You
can really can't. It's really no putting it back. Once
it's unboweled, then you're kind of done. But I've always
heard it, you know, described as disemboweled rather than emboweled.
So this is a funny. I've never seen it quite
stated this way before. So to unbowel them would be
(06:50):
to remove their their guddies.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yes, yeah, and then you pour a bunch of wine
over it, and then you seal up the glass and
well rectified so rectified, yeah, fortified wine like mad Dog
forty forty type stuff or whatever it's called. And then
you have to just keep it there. Eventually. What John
(07:16):
French tells us is that when this stuff has matured,
you can use it to help people here again, or
as he puts it.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
This oil doff wonderful cures and recovering hearing and those
that'd be deaf if a few drops thereof be put
quam into the ears right right now?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, I mean, if it's talking about removing earwax or gunk,
then maybe. But spoiler, folks, John French did not invent
a cure for deafness.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Bummer. Yeah, that was pretty permanent. I don't think anyone's
quite cracked that code yet. It is funny, though, because
when I hear things like this, and again, no shade
on anyone that's into like holistic remedies or herbal remedies,
and some of them, you know, again, your milas may vary.
But like things like ear candling. Have you heard of
this that these like things he has shove in your
ears and the item they, you know, supposedly like extract
(08:13):
the wax from your ears. I've never known them to
be particularly effective, but they do. When you crack them open.
They're filled with kind of weird, gross stuff, so it
does have the appearance of working. But again, I don't know, folks.
If you guys are proponents of ear candling, let us
know if that works for you. But of course, we
are going to eventually get to where the origins of
(08:33):
a lot of this kind of holistic medicine comes from,
you know, referred too often as Eastern medicine. When the
Chinese American population started to kind of boom in the
United States, a lot of these traditional remedies or medicines
were brought with them.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yes, yeah, this is where we see the evolution toward
the current definition of snake oil. There's a guy named
Richard White. He wrote a book called Railroad, and it's
all about the thousands and thousands of Chinese nationals who
immigrated to the US between eighteen forty nine and eighteen
(09:10):
eighty two and estimated one hundred and eighty thousand people.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I'm sensing a double entendre in the name of the book,
as though they maybe perhaps got a raw deal.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Again An he's a smart cookie, yeah, and it's a
good book. There's another guy, another author, David Howard Bain,
who wrote a book called Empire Express And when you
read these two books together you learn a lot about
the demographics. So the majority of these immigrants came from
(09:40):
lower income families, peasant families in southeastern China, and they
got signed up to these horrific contracts that would lock
them in for you know, five years or more with
very low wages compared to their other coworkers, the European counterparts.
So they had to resort to some of their own
(10:03):
traditional cultural practices when they couldn't go to a doctor
or something like that, you know, not even putting the
money aside, just the racism at the time made it
difficult for them to get medical treatment. They brought with
them this incredibly rich cultural history dating back thousands of years,
and one of the things they brought with them was
(10:24):
the idea of traditional medicine. Including that snake oil that
we mentioned from the Chinese water snake, which actually works
a little apparently. Well it makes sense though, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
It is an aquatic creature, and so it makes sense
perhaps that the oil from these water snakes might contain
some of the same nutrients that fish contain. And to
this day, people still swear by fish oil supplements, you know,
because they contain a ton of omega three fatty acids,
you know, which are apparently quite good for you. And
(10:59):
that's also good reason why people like you know, say,
a pescatarian diet is better than you know, being eating
all the meats, right.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Mm hmmm, yeah, as long as you can avoid the mercury.
So fair enough, fair enough. So they did something that
we see pretty often in the US. It's one of
our favorite phenomena here. They took the techniques and processes
that they already were very familiar with and they substituted
(11:28):
ingredients because, surprise, folks, not a lot of Chinese water
snakes in the continental US. So they started looking for
other snakes. And what do we do when they made
this snake oil with the omega three acids that you're
talking about there, they would rub it on their joints
after a long day of hard labor, and eventually, as
(11:51):
they were hanging out with other coworkers and parts of
their cohort, they started sharing the oil like, oh, hey,
darn or whatever it s you said. Your knees hurt
or your lower back hurts or something like that. Try
this just when you get home from work. Just rub
this on your joints and it will help soothe the pain.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
And again, the placebo effect is so strong. You're in
a difficult working environment, you are suffering, you know, likely
because of long hours and difficult working conditions, and someone
offers you a helping hands, someone offers you something that
they purported works for me.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
I swear by this. Try it out. Oh gosh, you're right,
it does work.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Tell your friends, you know, before you know it, everybody's
gaga for this this oil. You know they will, and
who knows, man, it could literally just be the fact
that it's a slippery, smooth, soothing, cool substance, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
It could be as simple as that.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
And we know that these types of phenomenon are still
very powerful to day, you know, because of all of
the weird bunk products that get pedled on TV or
on like you know, Huckster's like Alex Jones' Network Info Wars,
like a lot of that bone broth and things like that,
you know whatever. Again, we're not here to debunk any
one particular thing, but we know that there are people
(13:18):
out there that are trying to prey on those who
maybe haven't done their homework or or are just.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Are just really desperate and looking for some relief. Yeah,
and we see that people were acting with good intention
at the very beginning here they said, we can't find
the Chinese water snakes because we're not in China. In
the US, people started thinking, well, any snake can work, right,
(13:49):
Rattlesnake oil was incredibly popular, Like through the seventeen hundreds.
There's this thing I found from December seventeen forty two
that show was US snake oil was popular across the
pond as well. In the History of the Works of
the Learned, Uh, this guy describes three types of oil
(14:11):
in the US, snake oil, and says, now three sorts
of oil in that country whose virtues are fully proved
might not perhaps be found despicable. The oil of drums,
the oil of rattlesnakes, and that here's the weird one,
and that of turkey busters turkey bustard? Is that a
(14:32):
type of vulture? Isn't that what that is? I believe,
I believe it is. Yeah, it's a it's a ground
Uh it's a ground bird, isn't it? Maybe?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
So I swear for some reason, I'm thinking turkey vulture.
But the word bustered is very old. Yeah, busted bush
turkeys and yeah, A man, I love it when you
google something and then gain people also ask first one
is are bustards good eaten?
Speaker 4 (15:01):
I got?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I got? Why is it called busted? Yeah? What is
the largest bustard? What does the bustard look like? Oh? Weird?
Bird names are so ridiculous, they are.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
He's got a real he looks you know, honestly, dude,
he really does look more like a vulture. He's got
a real long, kind of like snakelike neck, and this
one that I'm looking at is covered in feathers. But
then he has those real reptilian kind of claws.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
You know, I feel yeah, yeah, yeah, And we know
that we also know that people believed in this is
genuine medicine. There's a guy named Jeremiah Barker writing for
the Medical Repository in New York in eighteen oh two,
and he is convinced that you could use what was it,
(15:45):
rattlesnake oil and a half a pint of bear grease
Jesus to cure yourself of colic. Okay, I don't even
I don't even really know what colic is.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Colic is none of that babies have. I mean that's specifically.
You know, you always hear about colicky babies. They have
like a like a coll or, they're like really hard
to soothe. But I've never really thought of it being
anything that an adult would have. Yeah, colicky crying is louder,
more high pitched, and more urgent sounded than regular crying.
(16:17):
So this would specifically be a treatment for an infant
or a small child.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
Yeah, let's give them half a pint of bear grease.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
A bear grease, man, it's a staple item in every household.
So bear bear grease is basically just fat from a bear.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Yeah, and this is actually gonna kind of piggyback onto
the question that I was kind of holding in my
back pocket here. Rattlesnake oil seems very dangerous to procure
as as does bear grease. And it seems like only
a certain kind of echelon of like you know, frontiersman's
(16:53):
would be able to acquire this stuff, you know, and
and live to tell about it.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Yeah, yeah, it's also it still exists today. There's you
can find rattlesnake oil online or purported rattlesnake oil. You
can also find rattlesnake oil soap apparently, which some people
swear by for treating skin conditions. Anyway, this stuff expands
pretty soon people are starting to use snake oil not
(17:19):
just to refer to medicine, but to all sorts of stuff.
It becomes. It becomes a euphemism for liquor, for like
hard alcoholic spirits and not as good as old Granddad's
leg medicine. No, no, not as good as Grandpa's leg medicine,
thank you for shouting that one out. At the end
of the nineteenth century, snake oil begins to acquire its
(17:44):
current meaning. A mixture sould is medicine, usually without regard
to its medical worth.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Well, and I wonder if that maybe figures into my
previous point slash question, like you know you got these
the rise of sort of the modern snake oil salesmen
who were maybe like, Wow, this snake oil stuff is booming.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
But snakes are scary.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
They're all bitey bite and you know, have venomous, you know,
big old fangs, and you know, I don't.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Want to mess with that.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
What if I just like slap something in a bottle
and said that's what it was, who's gonna stop me?
As you pointed out earlier, Ben, there is no Better
Business Bureau, There is no consumer reports, there is no
protection or FDA, you know, for that matter, there's nothing
in that realm at all to protect consumers from these people.
It was all kind of on good faith, and I
(18:35):
think even the idea of marketing and stuff was still
relatively new in.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
The United States at this time.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
So it's kind of like, oh, the door's wide open
for bad actors to come creeping in, even if maybe
their intentions were good. But I don't think this Clark
Stanley Fellow's intentions were ever good.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
His intentions toward himself were good. Okay, fair, Can you
can you tell us about the rattlesnake king? Yes, yes,
former cowboy retires. His name is Clark Stanley. As he said, Noel.
His street name is the Rattlesnake King. This is way
before Tiger King. Obviously, our buddy Clark stumbles onto this
(19:16):
idea and he tells people that after he became a cowboy,
he spent years with spiritual leaders in the Hope Native community,
mastering quote unquote the secret of snake oil. He gets
together with a druggist, a pharmacist basically in Boston, and
he begins marketing his product, his snake oil, as the
(19:42):
new cure all for whatever ails you. He makes his
own patent medicine. He's not the only guy in the
game here, but he is one of the most successful.
There were tons of what's where we use remedies, tonics,
purported medical cures for all kinds of ailments at the time,
(20:02):
what about gout? What about gout? While I, of course
whileye also drops the left handedness alto m M yeah, yes, shooty.
Speaker 6 (20:13):
Okay, all right, okay, Ben, I was writing something recently
and Andrew Jackson came up, and I was trying to
remember every single disease you said Andrew Jackson had when
we did our episode about when he beat the crap out.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Of it due to the cane. Oh he did do that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:28):
There was a lot of diseases we listed, and dropsy.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Was one of them. That's the funniest disease of them all.
What is it again? Is it real? What was dropsy?
It's a dropsy is a less technical term for something
called edema, Okay, and edema is when a lot of
watery fluid collects in the cavities of the body. So yeah, yeah, yeah,
(20:57):
I don't know why. We'd have to look into the
etymology of how it became called dropsy. But before we
do that, I love the term patent medicine and I
didn't know much about it. Patent medicine, it turns out,
have been around in England for a long long time.
And I think the reason people loved calling stuff patent
(21:20):
medicine in the US is because it felt posh, It
felt established.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Is it referring to the idea of being some sort
of proprietary you know, like patented form of treatment or
is it or those terms not related?
Speaker 1 (21:35):
No, they are very much recoated. Yeah. Yeah, because patent
medicines originally named after a certain dispensation given by English royalty.
You would get the letters patent which is a cosign
from the big influencers of the day. So the first
letters patent is given to this guy who evinces a
(21:58):
secret remedy in the late seventeenth century. And essentially what
this says is, Hey, we the royal family of England,
we mess with this guy. We think he's legit and
only he can make his secret recipe.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah, I mean, after all, it's at least a couple
of rungs above leeching and blood letting. Yeah, it's not like.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
They weren't willing to try just about whatever. But yeah,
you're right.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Isn't it funny how the blessing for these kind of
things came not from a learned body of physicians, but
specifically from the royal family, who like practiced all of
these barbaric you know, like trepanation and all of these
like insane treatments over throughout history. You know, they were
usually popularized by royalty. That's when, like you know, everyone
(22:47):
else would do He's like, well, the king does it.
Of course we're gonna do it. Why wouldn't I drill
a hole in my skull to let the demons out?
Speaker 1 (22:53):
What am I poor? And so the funny thing is
pat medicine in the US at this time, very few
products were ever actually patented. Instead, they just slapped the
word patent on it and sold it from their wagons.
And these things, these all had amazing names, like the
early English patent medicines. I thought you would enjoy some
(23:17):
of these Bateman's pectoral Drops, Turlington's Bosam of Life, and
of course the troublingly problematic Hooper's female Pills. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Just you know again, that's the funny thing about it,
is like they're just so broad, it's just beyond suspicious.
But I guess at the time, if you have a
little alliteration in your title and a snappy label and
you have patent on there, then you're probably people are
gonna be like, sure, why not, And we're gonna get
to some of these more like the kind of dogged
(23:49):
pony show of it all, you know, where you let's
do a demonstration, you know, like the loaves and fishes
and everything. I mean, okay, not to compare these guys
to Jesus Christ. That was maybe a bridge too far,
but it is all about like, let's make converts of
you by showing you that this stuff really works, you know,
right A very public setting. But oftentimes these people were
(24:09):
employing plants, you know. And what I mean, I don't
mean like you know, bushes, I mean individuals in the
audience who were paid to do what they ask them
to do, to like, you know, pretend to be cured instantly,
very similar to like big tent revivals.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
And all of that stuff.
Speaker 6 (24:26):
Yeah, jump in here. I have, of course been digging
around on Amazon looking for snake oil, literally snake oil.
I will say, actually, first and foremost, most of the
stuff I find is for snake repellent, which is actually
very useful. My mom uses synthetic wolf you're in to
repel critters around her house Missus Williams, very classic Missus
(24:47):
Williams from repelling them from her plants. But so it
makes sense having snake repellent. But there is I won't
name any brand because I don' want anyone to get
mad at me, but there is one.
Speaker 5 (24:57):
It's just a bar of soap. Yes, snake oil.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
And if you go to product details, the first one
is is discontinued by manufacturer and colon.
Speaker 5 (25:07):
No, No, that's the first thing. That's the first.
Speaker 6 (25:10):
The second one is the dimensions. That's the first thing
but I also found this other one, and I don't
know if it actually has snake oil, but it reads
just like something that snake oil as it. You know,
it is a moisturizing facial theorem for anti aging acne
scar treatment, Google massage, face, hair and skin, Google massage.
(25:32):
I have no idea what it is, but I'm just
reading it Vadim.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Okay, we'll put a pin in that, Max with the facts.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
That sneaking in the phone and tease fallen knowlsh it's
just for you right now, with the fact.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Or with the.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Very questionable the pattern facts. Fair enough, that's good, let's
go with that. But Ben, this is super cool. We've
got okay, we've got a female I think we last
left off with Hooper's female pills.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
These were all smashed sensations.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
We also have the very aptly named Dicey's Doctor Bateman's Drops.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Which is confusing. Okay, who is dices Drops or doctor Bateman's.
It's like that steakhouse that drives me Chris, Yeah, Ruth's
Chris Steakhouse. Why what is going I've been there. It's nice.
It's a nice place.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
But the nickname or something like Ruth's son's name was
Chris or something, so it was Ruth's Chris steakhout.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
You know what, they're justified. They're chef's you know, they're
they're not language doctors, but they make a fine they
make asteak, yes, sir, And so Dicey's doctor Bateman's drops.
That came from King George the First and uh it
was pat and and the pat was granted by King
(27:02):
George the First in seventeen twenty six. These patent medicines
we just named were all very popular in North America
at the time. The American Revolution still hasn't happened, right,
there's no US to speak of yet, But it didn't
take long for enterprising Americans to look around and say, hey,
why are we shipping this stuff all the way from England?
(27:23):
Why don't we make our own home brewed patent medicine.
And the numbers and types of medications or panaceas grew
in the decades leading up through the Revolution all the
way to the Civil War. It was a great way
to make money if you weren't concerned about hurting people, right.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Especially if you weren't concerned about hurting people, because I mean, honestly,
these folks who decided to get in on this were
clearly wise to the grift, and they're like, why bother
importing all this stuff? We know it's bullshit anyway, just
make it here at home and save us some tax
and some shipping.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah, And at the same time, the Civil War is
going to be a big, big part of the story here.
At the same time, we see that there are rapid
increases in industry, manufacturing, where people are living in cities,
there's still an absence of drug regulation to your earlier
excellent point, all of this makes a perfect environment for
(28:27):
patent medicine, and a lot of people turn to it
because they didn't trust regular medical practices of the time.
And this is where we learn about something called heroic medicine.
So before we call these people dunderheads or anything, we
have to realize that official accepted medicine at the time
(28:49):
was pretty gnarly and dangerous.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, I mean, it's's crazy that it was like still,
you know, even in you know, we're thinking of things
that were maybe popular in the Middle Ages that are
still kind of the order of the day. You know,
the idea of regulating humors and stuff using techniques like
blood letting or you know the the aforementioned you know,
skull drilling or trepanation. So I mean any promise of
(29:14):
like a cure that wouldn't require you to be bashed
over the head with a mallet. You know, it was
probably gonna be pretty attractive to the average you know consumer.
Speaker 6 (29:25):
So you guys want to know it would also be
attractive hearing the story behind Ruth Chris's Steakhouse. So the
story behind it is there was this guy named Chris
who started a steakhouse in New Orleans and he kept
selling it like he started the steakhouse, but he didn't
really want to have it, so he sold it and
he sold it in total six seven times, uh, buying
it back six times because every time he sold it
(29:46):
someone would run into the ground. But the seventh time
he sold it, he sold it to this woman named
Ruth Fortell, who then went on to own it for
a very long time and thus became since it was
Chris's Chris Steakhouse, it became Ruth Chris Steakhouse.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
I believe we have a two fer on Max with
the facts.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
That seeking in the phone and peacefullen.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Knowl it's just for you right now, and I feel
dumber for knowing that.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
He kept selling it back.
Speaker 6 (30:25):
That's according to this article on the Hill, why is
Ruth Chris Steakhouse called Ruth Chris publish?
Speaker 1 (30:33):
That's a reasonable question.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
It reminds me of like what happens with like a
lot of you know, Asian restaurants when they like, you know,
they'd be like.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Put numbers on stuff, put numbers on them, or be
like the new version or whatever. Where's trying to drag
in one? Yeah, that was the good one.
Speaker 6 (30:47):
Also special thanks to Michael Bartiromo for writing this article.
I want to make sure you give proper credit to Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Sure. So here's the thing. Again, we might sound a
bit like a broken rec but this is really important.
Before nineteen oh six, you could put whatever you wanted
in a bottle and sell it to whomever was dumb
enough or desperate enough to buy it. Patent medicines didn't
just not work. They often contain dangerous substances alcohol, opium,
(31:18):
other narcotics, stuff that's addictive. And again, they didn't have
to publish a list of ingredients. For instance, you could
just say, hey, is your child too loud? Take doctor
bon rouse Patented lithium of letha, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Quiet pills. That's something different. Check out stuff. I don't
want you to know this episode on Lake City Quiet Pills.
To figure out that you're right, Ben, and I also
tend to wonder. I'm sure there are ways to test
for the presence of certain substances, but like probably difficult
at this point in science for them to be able
(32:01):
to parse out exactly what was in something.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
You could probably say, okay, if I you know, drop
this whatever substance into it, as I can detect the
presence of alcohol, but probably not the same level of
precision that they have today when it comes to testing
for different materials, you know, So there was really no
way to even call somebody on it. At the very least,
you know, an average individual who might buy something like
this and they would have no way of determining what
(32:27):
was actually.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
In it or not. Literally, they would just run you
out of town, right, So you had to You had
to get while the getting was good. After you soldier stuff,
you know, you would meet the guy you planted in
the crowd at the crossroads outside of the town or
city limits. He would hop in the wagon and you
would be off to whatever is day's ride away.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
It reminds me of a scene in the excellent Paul
Thomas Anderson movie The Master where the character played by
Jaquin Phoenix somebody was named Freddie I can remember his
last name, but he's in the military, and he his
whole deal is he can make really good hoos out
of like whatever's around, like usually involves like photographic chemicals.
I think at one point he like steals some jet
(33:12):
fuel and he's just getting you.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Know, messed up out of his gourd on this stuff.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
And at one point I think he stays behind after
being discharged from the service and he's living in this
village like as a farmer, like an itinerant kind of farmer,
and he gives some of this stuff to an old
man who ends up dying and they chase him out
of town literally, you know, run him out on a rail.
This had to have happened to your point about you know,
if someone was coming through town and they were selling
some of this stuff and then somebody died, the only
(33:38):
recourse was like pitchfork justice.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
You know exactly, tarring feathering run him out out a rail.
It was a wild time. Back to our buddy Clark Stanley,
the Rattle State King. The reason we're talking about patent
medicine is because it's important to know he was just
(34:01):
one of many, many flim flam artists out there, but
he had a national breakthrough at the eighteen ninety three
Worlds Exposition in Chicago. He did a really gross ted talk.
He took a live snake, he cut it in front
of the onlookers. That was his spectacle, that was his
(34:23):
medicine show. And there's a great description of this by
a guy named Joe Schwartz, director of McGill University's Office
for Science and Society. It really puts us in the moment. Noel,
would you be okay with performing this quote in Max?
Could we get some cool music? Ben? I'm honored, thank you, Okay,
(34:44):
let's get.
Speaker 7 (34:46):
Stanley reached into a sack, plucked out a snake, slit
it open, and plunged it into boiling water. When the
fat rose to the top, he skimmed it off and
used it on the spot to create stan Lee's snakel
a liniment that was immediately snapped up by the throng
that had gathered.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
To watch the spectacle. Yeah, I love the idea. I
love a good throng, yeah yeah. And eviscerating the snake
live in front of a crowd was a great way
to sell things. Medicine shows were all about spectacle, and
at this point I'm persuaded, you guys, we should do
(35:26):
an episode on medicine show.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Wait wait, but before we Yeah, definitely, But is it
what it sounds like? I guess in my mind, I
always think of a medicine show as being like literally
kind of a traveling variety show. But wasn't was the
purpose of it to pedal some of these types of
weird cure alls.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
They were a part of it. Yeah, they were a
part of it, Like you're right with a variety show there,
but there was medicine involved, you know. So this guy
Stanley brilliant marketing, even though he's probably a very bad person.
He sells this snake oil liniment all the way up
until nineteen sixteen. He makes a lot of money. He's
(36:02):
going gangbusters with it. The problem is there are two
big issues with Stanley's snake oil. First, we have to mention,
even if you believe everything Stanley says, rattle snake oil
is way less effective than that Chinese water snake oil
(36:23):
it was trying to emulate. Chinese water snake oil contained
almost triple the amounts of the Mega three's the vital
acids as rattlesnake oil. But that's not even the big problem.
The big problem is Stanley snake oil did not have
any snake oil in it, right.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yeah, and yeah, that was sort of I think both
of our the conjecture there at the top, where it's like,
you know, what, what if I just slapped a label
on it saying that it had the thing and it
didn't have any of the thing, and that makes it
a hell of a lot easier for.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Me, you know.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
And then well then it all revolves around showmanship. It
all revolves around the sales pitch, you know, because again
there's zero accountability for these folks. And by the way,
I was just googling medicine show just to get a sense,
you know, all amazing posters that you can find that
are associated with some beautiful and this one here is
called Hamlin's Wizard Oil, the great medical wonder.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
There is no sword. It will not heal, no pain,
it will not subdu Let's not forget. Let's not forget it.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Second on the poster, like the opening act, Hamlin's cough
Balsam pleasant to take, magical in its effects.
Speaker 6 (37:35):
Then what you're saying is the only thing less effective
than snake oil is not snake oil.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Yes, Someway, Yes, Max, that is unfortunately true. These start
to go sideways for our boy Clark in the early
nineteen hundreds because of something called the Pure Food and
Drug Act of nineteen oh six.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Thank god, by the way, finally we're here a little
bit of accountability. I think didn't The Jungle have something
to do with this? That book, Upton Sinclair? Finally people
were aware of how disgusting and crooked like, you know,
a lot of industrial processes were around things that were
being consumed by Americans every day.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
The Jungle is an excellent book. If you have not
read it yet, please do. I know that sometimes books
from that period of time they get unfairly called, you know,
difficult to read or something. But Upton Sinclair writes in
a very lucid, very readable style. And The Jungle did
(38:39):
change the course of US history.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
And he was a real not agitator. That sounds an
outdated world, but he was a political figure he had
like serious yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
He was a big force in speaking truth to power
and like, you know, holding people accountable for their misdeeds.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Yeah yeah, he would rake that muck for sure. And
so Uncle Sam seizes a shipment of Stanley's snake oil
in nineteen seventeen, and the FEDS say, hang on a tick,
this has mineral oil. It has some kind of fatty
oil from an animal, but this is definitely beef and
(39:20):
then as turpentine and red pepper. So as they're examining
his product, they find it has no snake oil, no
provable medicinal properties, and they eventually find Charles Stanley drum
roll please, twenty dollars. That's that's about five hundred bucks today. Yeah,
(39:44):
that's that's the old slap on the wrist there. I
wonder if you add the hot pepper just to make
people give give a sense of that snaky bite, you know,
this is the snakiness of it all. Yeah, yeah, right,
I taste the rattlesnak taste the venom. So we haven't
even got right.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yeah, I know we're gonna get into this, and I
think it's really interesting. But the idea of like when
we're talking about these poisonous snakes and they're oil. Venom
hasn't really entered into the conversation at all. But that's
a whole other thing, right, the idea of like anti
venom and using that to treat people with snake bite
or to like prevent people from getting ill, you know,
when they're when they're actually.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Infected with the venom. Well, I'm sorry, we'll get to that.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
But that red pepper thing got me because that's like,
that's what they want you to think. It's like they
also I think there probably was a bit of a
bravado involved in it. The sales pits like, oh, I'm
drinking the snake juice, you know, like I'm a big
tough man.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
It's like drinking it's like drinking those spirits where they have,
you know, a worm in the bottle of tequila or
a snake in liquor, which I've tried. Have you guys
ever eaten steaks? I've had.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
I have had like snake you know, nuggets or something
like that, you know, like probably jerky form sure, and
I'm pretty sure I've had some like rattlesnake jerky.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
It's good.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
It's kind of gamey and it's got a nice like
snap to it. But I feel like when I've had
snake in fried kind of nugget for him, it sort
of tastes like chicken anything that's fair.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
What about you? Max? What about you?
Speaker 6 (41:19):
At first, I was gonna say no, I don't think
I have it. As soon as Noel said Jerky, I'm like, oh,
you know what? That rings a bell. I cannot think
of like a specific time I've had it, But I'm
I mean, I don't know. I think it's been discussed
on here, and we did our cricket episode a couple
of years ago. I'll pretty much eat anything.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Uh huh, old snake, snake Jerky Williams, they call him
out in Oklahoma.
Speaker 5 (41:40):
Let's get Max with the facts.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Right there.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
Is that sneaking in the phone, and he's fallen. Know
it's just for you right now here with the fat.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Oh man? All right? Okay, So we have to admit
people probably did die as a result of this quackery.
While the potion itself may not have poisoned them, it
definitely did not help with whatever maladies they suffered from.
And at this point, there is zero evidence that Clark
(42:16):
Stanley himself believed in what he sold. This was definitely
a grift, and the outrage of the American public over
Stanley snake Oil led to better regulation for American consumers.
People from every imaginable demographic except for snake oil salesman said, Hey,
(42:37):
you know what, we should be able to trust that
the stuff we buy is you know what we thought
we were buying. And I love that you mentioned Upton
Sinclair that book specifically about stockyards. And there's another author
around the same time, a writer named Samuel Hopkins Adams,
(42:59):
who does a lot of muck raking on the dirty,
dirty business of patent medicine manufacturers.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Not to mention our buddy Teddy Roosevelt. Really, you know,
we know him as like a bit of a naturalist,
and so he rides rough Yeah, he's a rough He's
a rough rider. He can't deny it. You don't want
to f with him, You just don't want to. On
June thirtieth, nineteen oh six, he was responsible for signing
(43:28):
into law the Federal Food and Drug Act, which was
then amended in nineteen twelve and strengthened created turned into
rather the even more powerful and actionable Food, Drug and
Cosmetic Act, which was passed in nineteen thirty eight. This
required extensive labeling to include lists of ingredients and also
(43:53):
for four manufacturers of these types of products, And it
also prohibited manufacturers from making faults and or miss leading claims.
And as we know, when these kinds of laws happen,
it's like people find loopholes. They always have to kind
of be adjusted and you have to sort of keep
after folksuse everyone's going to kind of try their best
to get around it. But these were meaningful changes, wouldn't
(44:14):
you say, Ben? At this point, yes, one hundred percent.
It sounds crazy to realize that there had to be
federal legislation just to get ingredients on products, and it's
incredibly important. The law required not a full ingredient list
at first. It just said, hey, if you have.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
The following things in your product, you have to put
it on the label. What kind of substances alcohol, morphine, opium, cocaine, heroine,
something called ukin which I wasn't familiar with, chloroform, cannabis
or acetanylide or chloral hydrate, a bunch of you know, addictive,
(44:56):
dangerous stuff. They were basically saying, if people are giving
their children opium or laudanum. They should know. I feel
like that's very reasonable. Oh definitely.
Speaker 6 (45:10):
Also, ukine is a drug that was previously used as
a local.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Anesthetic, yeah, like lynacane you know right right sign.
Speaker 6 (45:18):
As an analog of cocaine, and it was one of
the first synthetic chemical compounds to find general use as
an anesthetic, of course, going from Wikipedia right here.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Well, of course it's interesting that with cocaine.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
You know, we know how prevalent that was in all
kinds of products, you know, even down to like coca cola.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Classic that's what that's the classic stands for it, I
mean cocaine.
Speaker 6 (45:38):
Cocaine and cocaine similar things had been used for a
long time.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Yeah, like well generally anesthetic too, like because I mean
then you found, you know, in some of our tangents
and trivia sections can be some of the most fun
bits of these episodes that cocaine was actually used, Like
it could be rubbed onto the eye like to make
it like kind of still movable, like ill mobile, but
also it would like allow you to it would numb pain,
(46:05):
you know, kind of in and around that area in
case some surgery, but it wouldn't paralyze the thing, you know.
And then, of course, as we know, I mean, pharmaceutical
grades of a lot of these drugs were widely available
for a very long time, not only in products that
maybe it wasn't clear if that's what was in it,
but also just on their own. You could go down
(46:26):
the street and get like, you know, heroin, You could
get heroin at the pharmacy with I believe, without a prescription.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Yes, that's correct. And it wasn't until nineteen thirty eight
that the US government required all ingredients to be listed
on products. This was the direct result of the brujaja
surrounding Clark Stanley and Stanley's snake oil. People back then
were just as smart as people are today. They worked
(46:54):
with the info they had, But desperation breeds all kinds
of strange beliefs. So it's surprised that this kind of
quack medicine continues in the modern day. I love that
you mentioned anti venom. I think it's a very uncreative name,
but it's it's nuts anti matter, right, right, What is this, Well,
(47:15):
it's not matter, so it's definitely not venom. Is the
thing you need to know. The way it works is
you inject a mammal like a sheep, for instance, with
snake venom, hope the sheep survives and then harvest the
antibodies it produces.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Yeah, it's the same sort of concept as the vaccine
you like, and you take a little bit of the
of the virus and it causes your body to produce
these antibodies, right.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Yeah, oh, antibodies as well. What is this? It's not
a body, the opposite basically, And with that we are
gonna have to call it a day, Nol. I think
both of us are kind of sad about this because
it's pretty obvious that we're in love with the ridiculous
aspects of medicine shows and crazy patent remedies.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
I mean, look, I'm sure some of these were events
to behold, you know, like with all the picking and
grinning and all of that stuff. Probably some warsh tub
bas being played, you know, the old thing with the
with the.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
Spoons and all of that. Yeah, but you're right, I mean,
it's it is.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
It's not that much different than modern day music festivals
that are sponsored by like Red Bull, you know. I mean,
this is like the medicine was the reason for the event.
The music was just sort of ancillary to get people
to hang out so they would like buy the product.
And now it's like with these music festivals, it's all
just at marketing. Man, it's all just advertising, you know,
(48:42):
like to get you to buy your thirty five dollars
Red Bull and Tito's in a special cup.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Do you uh? Do you know what? Handboning is?
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Kind of like spoons, but without spoons, spoons with just
like yeah, like slapping your exactly.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Let me show him not doing a very good job.
You know you're doing a great job. Max. I don't
know if we're going to use this audio, but just
before he wrapped today, I've got to show you my
one of my favorite hamdboning videos. I'm the hamd bonist
in the group. You're not sure what that is. It's
a person who practices hand boning. And when I started
(49:23):
this way back a long time ago. We don't need
the preface here, boner to take a couple of minutes,
he described the scene here, Well, he kind of looks
like a member of the Grateful Dead.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
He's seated in a okay, he's sort of slapping his
yeah here all here, How can I not.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
He's got he's got a bunch of people sitting around
in a circle and they're watching him rhythmically slap his
will thighs.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Yeah, he's sort of slapping both the inner and outer
portion of his legs and alternating back and forth. And
now he's doing a windmill kind of move. Yeah, he's
really bringing the heat. Yeah, I let it. Steve Hickman
hamd Bonus. Yeah, it's also great he has a lot
of oh wow. Yeah, he's got a lot.
Speaker 6 (50:08):
Of microphones around him to make sure he captures all
of its.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
Right. Yeah, I do want to point out this guy
isn't very good. You don't think he's very good.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
I just think he could probably be rocking some more
complex rhythms than this guy. And he sees he looks
he's taking it so seriously, but I look at the
little face.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
I just I just.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Think, you know, like if I'm going to Cheez Louise,
if I'm comparing this to like bucket drummers or something
like that.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
This guy's not that he's not doing it for me, right.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
I appreciate like the craft and the visual part of it,
but the rhythm part of it.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Is just wow. I'm more interested in this spectacle that's
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
You're right, and that's why we were listening to it
in an audio podcast. But I hope we did an
okay job of describing it. Probably would have been some
hamd bonis hanging out at these medicine shows, yo, one
hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
Yeah. And with that, we're going to we're going to
head off to the dusty trail. We're onto another town
to pedal our podcast wares. In the meantime, we want
to thank everybody for tuning in. Thanks to all our
ridiculous historians. Thanks to the medicine man, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 4 (51:19):
What kind of.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
Patent medicine with Jonathan Strickland pedal.
Speaker 5 (51:23):
Instant death, instant hair growth.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
Oh, come on, that's a little below the belt.
Speaker 5 (51:31):
Nothing's below the belt when it comes to the quistor.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
That's fair. Who else should we think? Oh?
Speaker 2 (51:36):
In I was obviously, we'll thank you, surprising the owners
here in spirit he was Jeff co Uh you Ben,
we already think Max.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
I think that that does it for the thank yous.
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for our number one
medicine man super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Because I only did the booze so I could do
the hiss, because the hiss it's just topic appropriate.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
And hiss doesn't make sense, you know, without the boo. Yeah,
it's just what do we cat people?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
You need the boo followed by the hiss. If everyone
were to hiss first, I would immediately not take them seriously.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
It sounds like you're booing your own hiss exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
It's all about decorum here when it comes to nagging
people in public.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Your Noel, I'm Ben, and today our booze and our
hisses are appropriate because we're talking about something that's a
little bit etymology, it's a little bit marketing. It is
one hundred percent ridiculous, Noel. We are exploring snake oil.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, snake oil like as a concept, as an actual
thing that legitimately existed. Like, let's think of the you know,
I think maybe a lot of people's first experience with
the idea of a traveling snake oil salesman was probably
in The Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
In the original Wizard of Oz with the guy whatever.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
His name was, you know who in the black and
white version ends up being the I guess when Dorothy's
having her psychotic break and all the little details are
kaiser sozeing their way into her brain. That guy rep
since the Wizard of Oz, but he travels around in
a caravan that has a sign something marvelous. I believe
it has the word marvelous in it, and he sells
(02:08):
like tonics and stuff, you know, and like remedies, things
purported to be cure all's cure some perhaps panaceas your
mileage may vary, caveat em thor and so on.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
I love to use the word remedy because I know
it is a very dangerous time in history. But I
miss the days when you could just put any stupid,
possibly dangerous thing in a bottle, slap a label on
it that said remedy and some high faluting esoteric language,
and people would buy it. That's like that's snake oil, right,
(02:44):
some kind of fake treatment or cure, a way to
fix a condition that modern medicine just can't combat. You
see it all the time, right, like bad skin, baldness, cancer,
genetic diseases, what else?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Oh man, I mean you name it basically, but I
do want to issue a quick correction for what I said.
It was a Professor Marvel, which is cool because that
sounds very.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Much like a comic book character.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I mean, obviously we have Captain Marvel in the in
the Marvel Cinematic and comic book universe. But he wasn't
selling He necessarily wasn't necessarily selling products like that. He
was more of a fortune teller, acclaimed by the crowned
heads of Europe itself. Let him read your past, present
and future in his crystal. But the vehicle and the
(03:37):
wagon that he's riding around in is exactly the same
as those made famous by these very shady individuals, you know,
roaming the countryside or whatever in you know, maybe days
of great depression and beyond, trying to sell hapless individuals
on some kind of thing that would maybe cure what
(03:58):
ailed them, but probably can nothing but mineral spirits.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, Better Business Bureau loves these guys. Kidding. BBB wasn't around,
But I know you said something really interesting. I think
maybe we start there. Snake oil, although now it means
any cure treatment that falsely promises extraordinary results, is and
was a real thing in other cultures. Like let's go,
(04:23):
let's journey back to the days of ancient Chinese traditional medicine.
They used water snakes or oil from water snakes as
a treatment for joint pain. And I don't know, I
think we all have in the West such an association
with snake oil as a term for con artists, that
(04:44):
we kind of forget the legitimate attempts that humanity has
had using snake oil. Like it goes all the way
back to the seventeen hundreds, I think is the first
time the phrase is used in print.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
And Old Webster in his famous Dictionary does point out,
as you said, Ben, the first printed use of snake
oil appears in the early seventeen hundreds. But again with
examples from you know, ancient historian, ancient Roman historian Pliny
the Elder, we have examples dating as far back as
the early to mid sixteen hundreds referring to specific combinations
(05:23):
of the snake juice, you know, being ground and beaten
and strained into something that did seem to be helpful
to some degree. I think maybe my favorite one is
this longer one from John French from the Art of Distillation.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Ben, I believe you found this one. This is great.
Oh yeah, this is okay. So before we do this,
when everybody needs to know that it is written in
an older kind of tone. That's why it's cool, right.
So the oil of snakes and Adams. Take snakes us
(06:00):
when they are fat, which will be in June or July,
cut off their heads and take off their skins and
unbowel them and put them in a glass gord. Uh no,
why you take the.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Rest of this Well, first of all, let's let's just
unback a little bit of this work a glass gourd.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
What does that just mean? A jar basically? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
it was uh yeah, it was a glass. It was
like a mason jar.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, maybe one of those heavy like a heavy mason jar, right.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
And then you have unbowel, which does make sense, you know,
because you know, to how does one bowel something You
can really can't. It's really no putting it back. Once
it's unboweled, then you're kind of done. But I've always
heard it, you know, described as disemboweled rather than emboweled.
So this is a funny. I've never seen it quite
stated this way before. So to unbowel them would be
(06:50):
to remove their their guddies.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yes, yeah, and then you pour a bunch of wine
over it, and then you seal up the glass and
well rectified so rectified, yeah, fortified wine like mad Dog
forty forty type stuff or whatever it's called. And then
you have to just keep it there. Eventually. What John
(07:16):
French tells us is that when this stuff has matured,
you can use it to help people here again, or
as he puts it.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
This oil doff wonderful cures and recovering hearing and those
that'd be deaf if a few drops thereof be put
quam into the ears right right now?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, I mean, if it's talking about removing earwax or gunk,
then maybe. But spoiler, folks, John French did not invent
a cure for deafness.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Bummer. Yeah, that was pretty permanent. I don't think anyone's
quite cracked that code yet. It is funny, though, because
when I hear things like this, and again, no shade
on anyone that's into like holistic remedies or herbal remedies,
and some of them, you know, again, your milas may vary.
But like things like ear candling. Have you heard of
this that these like things he has shove in your
ears and the item they, you know, supposedly like extract
(08:13):
the wax from your ears. I've never known them to
be particularly effective, but they do. When you crack them open.
They're filled with kind of weird, gross stuff, so it
does have the appearance of working. But again, I don't know, folks.
If you guys are proponents of ear candling, let us
know if that works for you. But of course, we
are going to eventually get to where the origins of
(08:33):
a lot of this kind of holistic medicine comes from,
you know, referred too often as Eastern medicine. When the
Chinese American population started to kind of boom in the
United States, a lot of these traditional remedies or medicines
were brought with them.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yes, yeah, this is where we see the evolution toward
the current definition of snake oil. There's a guy named
Richard White. He wrote a book called Railroad, and it's
all about the thousands and thousands of Chinese nationals who
immigrated to the US between eighteen forty nine and eighteen
(09:10):
eighty two and estimated one hundred and eighty thousand people.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I'm sensing a double entendre in the name of the book,
as though they maybe perhaps got a raw deal.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Again An he's a smart cookie, yeah, and it's a
good book. There's another guy, another author, David Howard Bain,
who wrote a book called Empire Express And when you
read these two books together you learn a lot about
the demographics. So the majority of these immigrants came from
(09:40):
lower income families, peasant families in southeastern China, and they
got signed up to these horrific contracts that would lock
them in for you know, five years or more with
very low wages compared to their other coworkers, the European counterparts.
So they had to resort to some of their own
(10:03):
traditional cultural practices when they couldn't go to a doctor
or something like that, you know, not even putting the
money aside, just the racism at the time made it
difficult for them to get medical treatment. They brought with
them this incredibly rich cultural history dating back thousands of years,
and one of the things they brought with them was
(10:24):
the idea of traditional medicine. Including that snake oil that
we mentioned from the Chinese water snake, which actually works
a little apparently. Well it makes sense though, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
It is an aquatic creature, and so it makes sense
perhaps that the oil from these water snakes might contain
some of the same nutrients that fish contain. And to
this day, people still swear by fish oil supplements, you know,
because they contain a ton of omega three fatty acids,
you know, which are apparently quite good for you. And
(10:59):
that's also good reason why people like you know, say,
a pescatarian diet is better than you know, being eating
all the meats, right.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Mm hmmm, yeah, as long as you can avoid the mercury.
So fair enough, fair enough. So they did something that
we see pretty often in the US. It's one of
our favorite phenomena here. They took the techniques and processes
that they already were very familiar with and they substituted
(11:28):
ingredients because, surprise, folks, not a lot of Chinese water
snakes in the continental US. So they started looking for
other snakes. And what do we do when they made
this snake oil with the omega three acids that you're
talking about there, they would rub it on their joints
after a long day of hard labor, and eventually, as
(11:51):
they were hanging out with other coworkers and parts of
their cohort, they started sharing the oil like, oh, hey,
darn or whatever it s you said. Your knees hurt
or your lower back hurts or something like that. Try
this just when you get home from work. Just rub
this on your joints and it will help soothe the pain.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
And again, the placebo effect is so strong. You're in
a difficult working environment, you are suffering, you know, likely
because of long hours and difficult working conditions, and someone
offers you a helping hands, someone offers you something that
they purported works for me.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
I swear by this. Try it out. Oh gosh, you're right,
it does work.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Tell your friends, you know, before you know it, everybody's
gaga for this this oil. You know they will, and
who knows, man, it could literally just be the fact
that it's a slippery, smooth, soothing, cool substance, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
It could be as simple as that.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
And we know that these types of phenomenon are still
very powerful to day, you know, because of all of
the weird bunk products that get pedled on TV or
on like you know, Huckster's like Alex Jones' Network Info Wars,
like a lot of that bone broth and things like that,
you know whatever. Again, we're not here to debunk any
one particular thing, but we know that there are people
(13:18):
out there that are trying to prey on those who
maybe haven't done their homework or or are just.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Are just really desperate and looking for some relief. Yeah,
and we see that people were acting with good intention
at the very beginning here they said, we can't find
the Chinese water snakes because we're not in China. In
the US, people started thinking, well, any snake can work, right,
(13:49):
Rattlesnake oil was incredibly popular, Like through the seventeen hundreds.
There's this thing I found from December seventeen forty two
that show was US snake oil was popular across the
pond as well. In the History of the Works of
the Learned, Uh, this guy describes three types of oil
(14:11):
in the US, snake oil, and says, now three sorts
of oil in that country whose virtues are fully proved
might not perhaps be found despicable. The oil of drums,
the oil of rattlesnakes, and that here's the weird one,
and that of turkey busters turkey bustard? Is that a
(14:32):
type of vulture? Isn't that what that is? I believe,
I believe it is. Yeah, it's a it's a ground
Uh it's a ground bird, isn't it? Maybe?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
So I swear for some reason, I'm thinking turkey vulture.
But the word bustered is very old. Yeah, busted bush
turkeys and yeah, A man, I love it when you
google something and then gain people also ask first one
is are bustards good eaten?
Speaker 4 (15:01):
I got?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I got? Why is it called busted? Yeah? What is
the largest bustard? What does the bustard look like? Oh? Weird?
Bird names are so ridiculous, they are.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
He's got a real he looks you know, honestly, dude,
he really does look more like a vulture. He's got
a real long, kind of like snakelike neck, and this
one that I'm looking at is covered in feathers. But
then he has those real reptilian kind of claws.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
You know, I feel yeah, yeah, yeah, And we know
that we also know that people believed in this is
genuine medicine. There's a guy named Jeremiah Barker writing for
the Medical Repository in New York in eighteen oh two,
and he is convinced that you could use what was it,
(15:45):
rattlesnake oil and a half a pint of bear grease
Jesus to cure yourself of colic. Okay, I don't even
I don't even really know what colic is.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Colic is none of that babies have. I mean that's specifically.
You know, you always hear about colicky babies. They have
like a like a coll or, they're like really hard
to soothe. But I've never really thought of it being
anything that an adult would have. Yeah, colicky crying is louder,
more high pitched, and more urgent sounded than regular crying.
(16:17):
So this would specifically be a treatment for an infant
or a small child.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
Yeah, let's give them half a pint of bear grease.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
A bear grease, man, it's a staple item in every household.
So bear bear grease is basically just fat from a bear.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Yeah, and this is actually gonna kind of piggyback onto
the question that I was kind of holding in my
back pocket here. Rattlesnake oil seems very dangerous to procure
as as does bear grease. And it seems like only
a certain kind of echelon of like you know, frontiersman's
(16:53):
would be able to acquire this stuff, you know, and
and live to tell about it.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Yeah, yeah, it's also it still exists today. There's you
can find rattlesnake oil online or purported rattlesnake oil. You
can also find rattlesnake oil soap apparently, which some people
swear by for treating skin conditions. Anyway, this stuff expands
pretty soon people are starting to use snake oil not
(17:19):
just to refer to medicine, but to all sorts of stuff.
It becomes. It becomes a euphemism for liquor, for like
hard alcoholic spirits and not as good as old Granddad's
leg medicine. No, no, not as good as Grandpa's leg medicine,
thank you for shouting that one out. At the end
of the nineteenth century, snake oil begins to acquire its
(17:44):
current meaning. A mixture sould is medicine, usually without regard
to its medical worth.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Well, and I wonder if that maybe figures into my
previous point slash question, like you know you got these
the rise of sort of the modern snake oil salesmen
who were maybe like, Wow, this snake oil stuff is booming.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
But snakes are scary.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
They're all bitey bite and you know, have venomous, you know,
big old fangs, and you know, I don't.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Want to mess with that.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
What if I just like slap something in a bottle
and said that's what it was, who's gonna stop me?
As you pointed out earlier, Ben, there is no Better
Business Bureau, There is no consumer reports, there is no
protection or FDA, you know, for that matter, there's nothing
in that realm at all to protect consumers from these people.
It was all kind of on good faith, and I
(18:35):
think even the idea of marketing and stuff was still
relatively new in.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
The United States at this time.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
So it's kind of like, oh, the door's wide open
for bad actors to come creeping in, even if maybe
their intentions were good. But I don't think this Clark
Stanley Fellow's intentions were ever good.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
His intentions toward himself were good. Okay, fair, Can you
can you tell us about the rattlesnake king? Yes, yes,
former cowboy retires. His name is Clark Stanley. As he said, Noel.
His street name is the Rattlesnake King. This is way
before Tiger King. Obviously, our buddy Clark stumbles onto this
(19:16):
idea and he tells people that after he became a cowboy,
he spent years with spiritual leaders in the Hope Native community,
mastering quote unquote the secret of snake oil. He gets
together with a druggist, a pharmacist basically in Boston, and
he begins marketing his product, his snake oil, as the
(19:42):
new cure all for whatever ails you. He makes his
own patent medicine. He's not the only guy in the
game here, but he is one of the most successful.
There were tons of what's where we use remedies, tonics,
purported medical cures for all kinds of ailments at the time,
(20:02):
what about gout? What about gout? While I, of course
whileye also drops the left handedness alto m M yeah, yes, shooty.
Speaker 6 (20:13):
Okay, all right, okay, Ben, I was writing something recently
and Andrew Jackson came up, and I was trying to
remember every single disease you said Andrew Jackson had when
we did our episode about when he beat the crap out.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Of it due to the cane. Oh he did do that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:28):
There was a lot of diseases we listed, and dropsy.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Was one of them. That's the funniest disease of them all.
What is it again? Is it real? What was dropsy?
It's a dropsy is a less technical term for something
called edema, Okay, and edema is when a lot of
watery fluid collects in the cavities of the body. So yeah, yeah, yeah,
(20:57):
I don't know why. We'd have to look into the
etymology of how it became called dropsy. But before we
do that, I love the term patent medicine and I
didn't know much about it. Patent medicine, it turns out,
have been around in England for a long long time.
And I think the reason people loved calling stuff patent
(21:20):
medicine in the US is because it felt posh, It
felt established.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Is it referring to the idea of being some sort
of proprietary you know, like patented form of treatment or
is it or those terms not related?
Speaker 1 (21:35):
No, they are very much recoated. Yeah. Yeah, because patent
medicines originally named after a certain dispensation given by English royalty.
You would get the letters patent which is a cosign
from the big influencers of the day. So the first
letters patent is given to this guy who evinces a
(21:58):
secret remedy in the late seventeenth century. And essentially what
this says is, Hey, we the royal family of England,
we mess with this guy. We think he's legit and
only he can make his secret recipe.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah, I mean, after all, it's at least a couple
of rungs above leeching and blood letting. Yeah, it's not like.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
They weren't willing to try just about whatever. But yeah,
you're right.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Isn't it funny how the blessing for these kind of
things came not from a learned body of physicians, but
specifically from the royal family, who like practiced all of
these barbaric you know, like trepanation and all of these
like insane treatments over throughout history. You know, they were
usually popularized by royalty. That's when, like you know, everyone
(22:47):
else would do He's like, well, the king does it.
Of course we're gonna do it. Why wouldn't I drill
a hole in my skull to let the demons out?
Speaker 1 (22:53):
What am I poor? And so the funny thing is
pat medicine in the US at this time, very few
products were ever actually patented. Instead, they just slapped the
word patent on it and sold it from their wagons.
And these things, these all had amazing names, like the
early English patent medicines. I thought you would enjoy some
(23:17):
of these Bateman's pectoral Drops, Turlington's Bosam of Life, and
of course the troublingly problematic Hooper's female Pills. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Just you know again, that's the funny thing about it,
is like they're just so broad, it's just beyond suspicious.
But I guess at the time, if you have a
little alliteration in your title and a snappy label and
you have patent on there, then you're probably people are
gonna be like, sure, why not, And we're gonna get
to some of these more like the kind of dogged
(23:49):
pony show of it all, you know, where you let's
do a demonstration, you know, like the loaves and fishes
and everything. I mean, okay, not to compare these guys
to Jesus Christ. That was maybe a bridge too far,
but it is all about like, let's make converts of
you by showing you that this stuff really works, you know,
right A very public setting. But oftentimes these people were
(24:09):
employing plants, you know. And what I mean, I don't
mean like you know, bushes, I mean individuals in the
audience who were paid to do what they ask them
to do, to like, you know, pretend to be cured instantly,
very similar to like big tent revivals.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
And all of that stuff.
Speaker 6 (24:26):
Yeah, jump in here. I have, of course been digging
around on Amazon looking for snake oil, literally snake oil.
I will say, actually, first and foremost, most of the
stuff I find is for snake repellent, which is actually
very useful. My mom uses synthetic wolf you're in to
repel critters around her house Missus Williams, very classic Missus
(24:47):
Williams from repelling them from her plants. But so it
makes sense having snake repellent. But there is I won't
name any brand because I don' want anyone to get
mad at me, but there is one.
Speaker 5 (24:57):
It's just a bar of soap. Yes, snake oil.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
And if you go to product details, the first one
is is discontinued by manufacturer and colon.
Speaker 5 (25:07):
No, No, that's the first thing. That's the first.
Speaker 6 (25:10):
The second one is the dimensions. That's the first thing
but I also found this other one, and I don't
know if it actually has snake oil, but it reads
just like something that snake oil as it. You know,
it is a moisturizing facial theorem for anti aging acne
scar treatment, Google massage, face, hair and skin, Google massage.
(25:32):
I have no idea what it is, but I'm just
reading it Vadim.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Okay, we'll put a pin in that, Max with the facts.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
That sneaking in the phone and tease fallen knowlsh it's
just for you right now, with the fact.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Or with the.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Very questionable the pattern facts. Fair enough, that's good, let's
go with that. But Ben, this is super cool. We've
got okay, we've got a female I think we last
left off with Hooper's female pills.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
These were all smashed sensations.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
We also have the very aptly named Dicey's Doctor Bateman's Drops.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Which is confusing. Okay, who is dices Drops or doctor Bateman's.
It's like that steakhouse that drives me Chris, Yeah, Ruth's
Chris Steakhouse. Why what is going I've been there. It's nice.
It's a nice place.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
But the nickname or something like Ruth's son's name was
Chris or something, so it was Ruth's Chris steakhout.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
You know what, they're justified. They're chef's you know, they're
they're not language doctors, but they make a fine they
make asteak, yes, sir, And so Dicey's doctor Bateman's drops.
That came from King George the First and uh it
was pat and and the pat was granted by King
(27:02):
George the First in seventeen twenty six. These patent medicines
we just named were all very popular in North America
at the time. The American Revolution still hasn't happened, right,
there's no US to speak of yet, But it didn't
take long for enterprising Americans to look around and say, hey,
why are we shipping this stuff all the way from England?
(27:23):
Why don't we make our own home brewed patent medicine.
And the numbers and types of medications or panaceas grew
in the decades leading up through the Revolution all the
way to the Civil War. It was a great way
to make money if you weren't concerned about hurting people, right.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Especially if you weren't concerned about hurting people, because I mean, honestly,
these folks who decided to get in on this were
clearly wise to the grift, and they're like, why bother
importing all this stuff? We know it's bullshit anyway, just
make it here at home and save us some tax
and some shipping.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah, And at the same time, the Civil War is
going to be a big, big part of the story here.
At the same time, we see that there are rapid
increases in industry, manufacturing, where people are living in cities,
there's still an absence of drug regulation to your earlier
excellent point, all of this makes a perfect environment for
(28:27):
patent medicine, and a lot of people turn to it
because they didn't trust regular medical practices of the time.
And this is where we learn about something called heroic medicine.
So before we call these people dunderheads or anything, we
have to realize that official accepted medicine at the time
(28:49):
was pretty gnarly and dangerous.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, I mean, it's's crazy that it was like still,
you know, even in you know, we're thinking of things
that were maybe popular in the Middle Ages that are
still kind of the order of the day. You know,
the idea of regulating humors and stuff using techniques like
blood letting or you know the the aforementioned you know,
skull drilling or trepanation. So I mean any promise of
(29:14):
like a cure that wouldn't require you to be bashed
over the head with a mallet. You know, it was
probably gonna be pretty attractive to the average you know consumer.
Speaker 6 (29:25):
So you guys want to know it would also be
attractive hearing the story behind Ruth Chris's Steakhouse. So the
story behind it is there was this guy named Chris
who started a steakhouse in New Orleans and he kept
selling it like he started the steakhouse, but he didn't
really want to have it, so he sold it and
he sold it in total six seven times, uh, buying
it back six times because every time he sold it
(29:46):
someone would run into the ground. But the seventh time
he sold it, he sold it to this woman named
Ruth Fortell, who then went on to own it for
a very long time and thus became since it was
Chris's Chris Steakhouse, it became Ruth Chris Steakhouse.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
I believe we have a two fer on Max with
the facts.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
That seeking in the phone and peacefullen.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Knowl it's just for you right now, and I feel
dumber for knowing that.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
He kept selling it back.
Speaker 6 (30:25):
That's according to this article on the Hill, why is
Ruth Chris Steakhouse called Ruth Chris publish?
Speaker 1 (30:33):
That's a reasonable question.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
It reminds me of like what happens with like a
lot of you know, Asian restaurants when they like, you know,
they'd be like.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Put numbers on stuff, put numbers on them, or be
like the new version or whatever. Where's trying to drag
in one? Yeah, that was the good one.
Speaker 6 (30:47):
Also special thanks to Michael Bartiromo for writing this article.
I want to make sure you give proper credit to Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Sure. So here's the thing. Again, we might sound a
bit like a broken rec but this is really important.
Before nineteen oh six, you could put whatever you wanted
in a bottle and sell it to whomever was dumb
enough or desperate enough to buy it. Patent medicines didn't
just not work. They often contain dangerous substances alcohol, opium,
(31:18):
other narcotics, stuff that's addictive. And again, they didn't have
to publish a list of ingredients. For instance, you could
just say, hey, is your child too loud? Take doctor
bon rouse Patented lithium of letha, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Quiet pills. That's something different. Check out stuff. I don't
want you to know this episode on Lake City Quiet Pills.
To figure out that you're right, Ben, and I also
tend to wonder. I'm sure there are ways to test
for the presence of certain substances, but like probably difficult
at this point in science for them to be able
(32:01):
to parse out exactly what was in something.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
You could probably say, okay, if I you know, drop
this whatever substance into it, as I can detect the
presence of alcohol, but probably not the same level of
precision that they have today when it comes to testing
for different materials, you know, So there was really no
way to even call somebody on it. At the very least,
you know, an average individual who might buy something like
this and they would have no way of determining what
(32:27):
was actually.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
In it or not. Literally, they would just run you
out of town, right, So you had to You had
to get while the getting was good. After you soldier stuff,
you know, you would meet the guy you planted in
the crowd at the crossroads outside of the town or
city limits. He would hop in the wagon and you
would be off to whatever is day's ride away.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
It reminds me of a scene in the excellent Paul
Thomas Anderson movie The Master where the character played by
Jaquin Phoenix somebody was named Freddie I can remember his
last name, but he's in the military, and he his
whole deal is he can make really good hoos out
of like whatever's around, like usually involves like photographic chemicals.
I think at one point he like steals some jet
(33:12):
fuel and he's just getting you.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Know, messed up out of his gourd on this stuff.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
And at one point I think he stays behind after
being discharged from the service and he's living in this
village like as a farmer, like an itinerant kind of farmer,
and he gives some of this stuff to an old
man who ends up dying and they chase him out
of town literally, you know, run him out on a rail.
This had to have happened to your point about you know,
if someone was coming through town and they were selling
some of this stuff and then somebody died, the only
(33:38):
recourse was like pitchfork justice.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
You know exactly, tarring feathering run him out out a rail.
It was a wild time. Back to our buddy Clark Stanley,
the Rattle State King. The reason we're talking about patent
medicine is because it's important to know he was just
(34:01):
one of many, many flim flam artists out there, but
he had a national breakthrough at the eighteen ninety three
Worlds Exposition in Chicago. He did a really gross ted talk.
He took a live snake, he cut it in front
of the onlookers. That was his spectacle, that was his
(34:23):
medicine show. And there's a great description of this by
a guy named Joe Schwartz, director of McGill University's Office
for Science and Society. It really puts us in the moment. Noel,
would you be okay with performing this quote in Max?
Could we get some cool music? Ben? I'm honored, thank you, Okay,
(34:44):
let's get.
Speaker 7 (34:46):
Stanley reached into a sack, plucked out a snake, slit
it open, and plunged it into boiling water. When the
fat rose to the top, he skimmed it off and
used it on the spot to create stan Lee's snakel
a liniment that was immediately snapped up by the throng
that had gathered.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
To watch the spectacle. Yeah, I love the idea. I
love a good throng, yeah yeah. And eviscerating the snake
live in front of a crowd was a great way
to sell things. Medicine shows were all about spectacle, and
at this point I'm persuaded, you guys, we should do
(35:26):
an episode on medicine show.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Wait wait, but before we Yeah, definitely, But is it
what it sounds like? I guess in my mind, I
always think of a medicine show as being like literally
kind of a traveling variety show. But wasn't was the
purpose of it to pedal some of these types of
weird cure alls.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
They were a part of it. Yeah, they were a
part of it, Like you're right with a variety show there,
but there was medicine involved, you know. So this guy
Stanley brilliant marketing, even though he's probably a very bad person.
He sells this snake oil liniment all the way up
until nineteen sixteen. He makes a lot of money. He's
(36:02):
going gangbusters with it. The problem is there are two
big issues with Stanley's snake oil. First, we have to mention,
even if you believe everything Stanley says, rattle snake oil
is way less effective than that Chinese water snake oil
(36:23):
it was trying to emulate. Chinese water snake oil contained
almost triple the amounts of the Mega three's the vital
acids as rattlesnake oil. But that's not even the big problem.
The big problem is Stanley snake oil did not have
any snake oil in it, right.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yeah, and yeah, that was sort of I think both
of our the conjecture there at the top, where it's like,
you know, what, what if I just slapped a label
on it saying that it had the thing and it
didn't have any of the thing, and that makes it
a hell of a lot easier for.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Me, you know.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
And then well then it all revolves around showmanship. It
all revolves around the sales pitch, you know, because again
there's zero accountability for these folks. And by the way,
I was just googling medicine show just to get a sense,
you know, all amazing posters that you can find that
are associated with some beautiful and this one here is
called Hamlin's Wizard Oil, the great medical wonder.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
There is no sword. It will not heal, no pain,
it will not subdu Let's not forget. Let's not forget it.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Second on the poster, like the opening act, Hamlin's cough
Balsam pleasant to take, magical in its effects.
Speaker 6 (37:35):
Then what you're saying is the only thing less effective
than snake oil is not snake oil.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Yes, Someway, Yes, Max, that is unfortunately true. These start
to go sideways for our boy Clark in the early
nineteen hundreds because of something called the Pure Food and
Drug Act of nineteen oh six.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Thank god, by the way, finally we're here a little
bit of accountability. I think didn't The Jungle have something
to do with this? That book, Upton Sinclair? Finally people
were aware of how disgusting and crooked like, you know,
a lot of industrial processes were around things that were
being consumed by Americans every day.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
The Jungle is an excellent book. If you have not
read it yet, please do. I know that sometimes books
from that period of time they get unfairly called, you know,
difficult to read or something. But Upton Sinclair writes in
a very lucid, very readable style. And The Jungle did
(38:39):
change the course of US history.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
And he was a real not agitator. That sounds an
outdated world, but he was a political figure he had
like serious yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
He was a big force in speaking truth to power
and like, you know, holding people accountable for their misdeeds.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Yeah yeah, he would rake that muck for sure. And
so Uncle Sam seizes a shipment of Stanley's snake oil
in nineteen seventeen, and the FEDS say, hang on a tick,
this has mineral oil. It has some kind of fatty
oil from an animal, but this is definitely beef and
(39:20):
then as turpentine and red pepper. So as they're examining
his product, they find it has no snake oil, no
provable medicinal properties, and they eventually find Charles Stanley drum
roll please, twenty dollars. That's that's about five hundred bucks today. Yeah,
(39:44):
that's that's the old slap on the wrist there. I
wonder if you add the hot pepper just to make
people give give a sense of that snaky bite, you know,
this is the snakiness of it all. Yeah, yeah, right,
I taste the rattlesnak taste the venom. So we haven't
even got right.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yeah, I know we're gonna get into this, and I
think it's really interesting. But the idea of like when
we're talking about these poisonous snakes and they're oil. Venom
hasn't really entered into the conversation at all. But that's
a whole other thing, right, the idea of like anti
venom and using that to treat people with snake bite
or to like prevent people from getting ill, you know,
when they're when they're actually.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Infected with the venom. Well, I'm sorry, we'll get to that.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
But that red pepper thing got me because that's like,
that's what they want you to think. It's like they
also I think there probably was a bit of a
bravado involved in it. The sales pits like, oh, I'm
drinking the snake juice, you know, like I'm a big
tough man.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
It's like drinking it's like drinking those spirits where they have,
you know, a worm in the bottle of tequila or
a snake in liquor, which I've tried. Have you guys
ever eaten steaks? I've had.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
I have had like snake you know, nuggets or something
like that, you know, like probably jerky form sure, and
I'm pretty sure I've had some like rattlesnake jerky.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
It's good.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
It's kind of gamey and it's got a nice like
snap to it. But I feel like when I've had
snake in fried kind of nugget for him, it sort
of tastes like chicken anything that's fair.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
What about you? Max? What about you?
Speaker 6 (41:19):
At first, I was gonna say no, I don't think
I have it. As soon as Noel said Jerky, I'm like, oh,
you know what? That rings a bell. I cannot think
of like a specific time I've had it, But I'm
I mean, I don't know. I think it's been discussed
on here, and we did our cricket episode a couple
of years ago. I'll pretty much eat anything.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Uh huh, old snake, snake Jerky Williams, they call him
out in Oklahoma.
Speaker 5 (41:40):
Let's get Max with the facts.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Right there.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
Is that sneaking in the phone, and he's fallen. Know
it's just for you right now here with the fat.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Oh man? All right? Okay, So we have to admit
people probably did die as a result of this quackery.
While the potion itself may not have poisoned them, it
definitely did not help with whatever maladies they suffered from.
And at this point, there is zero evidence that Clark
(42:16):
Stanley himself believed in what he sold. This was definitely
a grift, and the outrage of the American public over
Stanley snake Oil led to better regulation for American consumers.
People from every imaginable demographic except for snake oil salesman said, Hey,
(42:37):
you know what, we should be able to trust that
the stuff we buy is you know what we thought
we were buying. And I love that you mentioned Upton
Sinclair that book specifically about stockyards. And there's another author
around the same time, a writer named Samuel Hopkins Adams,
(42:59):
who does a lot of muck raking on the dirty,
dirty business of patent medicine manufacturers.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Not to mention our buddy Teddy Roosevelt. Really, you know,
we know him as like a bit of a naturalist,
and so he rides rough Yeah, he's a rough He's
a rough rider. He can't deny it. You don't want
to f with him, You just don't want to. On
June thirtieth, nineteen oh six, he was responsible for signing
(43:28):
into law the Federal Food and Drug Act, which was
then amended in nineteen twelve and strengthened created turned into
rather the even more powerful and actionable Food, Drug and
Cosmetic Act, which was passed in nineteen thirty eight. This
required extensive labeling to include lists of ingredients and also
(43:53):
for four manufacturers of these types of products, And it
also prohibited manufacturers from making faults and or miss leading claims.
And as we know, when these kinds of laws happen,
it's like people find loopholes. They always have to kind
of be adjusted and you have to sort of keep
after folksuse everyone's going to kind of try their best
to get around it. But these were meaningful changes, wouldn't
(44:14):
you say, Ben? At this point, yes, one hundred percent.
It sounds crazy to realize that there had to be
federal legislation just to get ingredients on products, and it's
incredibly important. The law required not a full ingredient list
at first. It just said, hey, if you have.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
The following things in your product, you have to put
it on the label. What kind of substances alcohol, morphine, opium, cocaine, heroine,
something called ukin which I wasn't familiar with, chloroform, cannabis
or acetanylide or chloral hydrate, a bunch of you know, addictive,
(44:56):
dangerous stuff. They were basically saying, if people are giving
their children opium or laudanum. They should know. I feel
like that's very reasonable. Oh definitely.
Speaker 6 (45:10):
Also, ukine is a drug that was previously used as
a local.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Anesthetic, yeah, like lynacane you know right right sign.
Speaker 6 (45:18):
As an analog of cocaine, and it was one of
the first synthetic chemical compounds to find general use as
an anesthetic, of course, going from Wikipedia right here.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Well, of course it's interesting that with cocaine.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
You know, we know how prevalent that was in all
kinds of products, you know, even down to like coca cola.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Classic that's what that's the classic stands for it, I
mean cocaine.
Speaker 6 (45:38):
Cocaine and cocaine similar things had been used for a
long time.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Yeah, like well generally anesthetic too, like because I mean
then you found, you know, in some of our tangents
and trivia sections can be some of the most fun
bits of these episodes that cocaine was actually used, Like
it could be rubbed onto the eye like to make
it like kind of still movable, like ill mobile, but
also it would like allow you to it would numb pain,
(46:05):
you know, kind of in and around that area in
case some surgery, but it wouldn't paralyze the thing, you know.
And then, of course, as we know, I mean, pharmaceutical
grades of a lot of these drugs were widely available
for a very long time, not only in products that
maybe it wasn't clear if that's what was in it,
but also just on their own. You could go down
(46:26):
the street and get like, you know, heroin, You could
get heroin at the pharmacy with I believe, without a prescription.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Yes, that's correct. And it wasn't until nineteen thirty eight
that the US government required all ingredients to be listed
on products. This was the direct result of the brujaja
surrounding Clark Stanley and Stanley's snake oil. People back then
were just as smart as people are today. They worked
(46:54):
with the info they had, But desperation breeds all kinds
of strange beliefs. So it's surprised that this kind of
quack medicine continues in the modern day. I love that
you mentioned anti venom. I think it's a very uncreative name,
but it's it's nuts anti matter, right, right, What is this, Well,
(47:15):
it's not matter, so it's definitely not venom. Is the
thing you need to know. The way it works is
you inject a mammal like a sheep, for instance, with
snake venom, hope the sheep survives and then harvest the
antibodies it produces.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Yeah, it's the same sort of concept as the vaccine
you like, and you take a little bit of the
of the virus and it causes your body to produce
these antibodies, right.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Yeah, oh, antibodies as well. What is this? It's not
a body, the opposite basically, And with that we are
gonna have to call it a day, Nol. I think
both of us are kind of sad about this because
it's pretty obvious that we're in love with the ridiculous
aspects of medicine shows and crazy patent remedies.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
I mean, look, I'm sure some of these were events
to behold, you know, like with all the picking and
grinning and all of that stuff. Probably some warsh tub
bas being played, you know, the old thing with the
with the.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
Spoons and all of that. Yeah, but you're right, I mean,
it's it is.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
It's not that much different than modern day music festivals
that are sponsored by like Red Bull, you know. I mean,
this is like the medicine was the reason for the event.
The music was just sort of ancillary to get people
to hang out so they would like buy the product.
And now it's like with these music festivals, it's all
just at marketing. Man, it's all just advertising, you know,
(48:42):
like to get you to buy your thirty five dollars
Red Bull and Tito's in a special cup.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Do you uh? Do you know what? Handboning is?
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Kind of like spoons, but without spoons, spoons with just
like yeah, like slapping your exactly.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Let me show him not doing a very good job.
You know you're doing a great job. Max. I don't
know if we're going to use this audio, but just
before he wrapped today, I've got to show you my
one of my favorite hamdboning videos. I'm the hamd bonist
in the group. You're not sure what that is. It's
a person who practices hand boning. And when I started
(49:23):
this way back a long time ago. We don't need
the preface here, boner to take a couple of minutes,
he described the scene here, Well, he kind of looks
like a member of the Grateful Dead.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
He's seated in a okay, he's sort of slapping his
yeah here all here, How can I not.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
He's got he's got a bunch of people sitting around
in a circle and they're watching him rhythmically slap his
will thighs.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Yeah, he's sort of slapping both the inner and outer
portion of his legs and alternating back and forth. And
now he's doing a windmill kind of move. Yeah, he's
really bringing the heat. Yeah, I let it. Steve Hickman
hamd Bonus. Yeah, it's also great he has a lot
of oh wow. Yeah, he's got a lot.
Speaker 6 (50:08):
Of microphones around him to make sure he captures all
of its.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
Right. Yeah, I do want to point out this guy
isn't very good. You don't think he's very good.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
I just think he could probably be rocking some more
complex rhythms than this guy. And he sees he looks
he's taking it so seriously, but I look at the
little face.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
I just I just.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Think, you know, like if I'm going to Cheez Louise,
if I'm comparing this to like bucket drummers or something
like that.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
This guy's not that he's not doing it for me, right.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
I appreciate like the craft and the visual part of it,
but the rhythm part of it.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Is just wow. I'm more interested in this spectacle that's
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
You're right, and that's why we were listening to it
in an audio podcast. But I hope we did an
okay job of describing it. Probably would have been some
hamd bonis hanging out at these medicine shows, yo, one
hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
Yeah. And with that, we're going to we're going to
head off to the dusty trail. We're onto another town
to pedal our podcast wares. In the meantime, we want
to thank everybody for tuning in. Thanks to all our
ridiculous historians. Thanks to the medicine man, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 4 (51:19):
What kind of.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
Patent medicine with Jonathan Strickland pedal.
Speaker 5 (51:23):
Instant death, instant hair growth.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
Oh, come on, that's a little below the belt.
Speaker 5 (51:31):
Nothing's below the belt when it comes to the quistor.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
That's fair. Who else should we think? Oh?
Speaker 2 (51:36):
In I was obviously, we'll thank you, surprising the owners
here in spirit he was Jeff co Uh you Ben,
we already think Max.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
I think that that does it for the thank yous.
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
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Noel Brown
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