Numerous sources report that thousands of Chinese immigrated to the United States between 1849 and 1882, as indentured laborers to work on building the Transcontinental Railroad. The vast majority came from peasant families in southeastern China and were signed to contracts that ran up to five years for relatively low wages (compared with their white counterparts).
Among the items the Chinese railroad workers brought with them to the States were various medicines — including snake oil. Made from the oil of the Chinese water snake, which is rich in the omega-3 acids that help reduce inflammation, snake oil in its original form really was effective, especially when used to treat arthritis and bursitis. The workers would rub the oil, used for centuries in China, on their joints after a long hard day at work.
The story goes that the Chinese workers began sharing the oil with American counterparts, who marveled at the effects.
As word of the healing powers of Chinese snake oil grew, many Americans wondered how they could make their own snake oil here in the United States. Because there were no Chinese water snakes handy in the American West, many healers began using rattlesnakes to make their own versions of snake oil.
By the latter half of the 19th Century, which saw a dramatic rise in the popularity of “patent medicines” – tonics which promised to cure a wide variety of ailments including chronic pain, headaches, “female complaints” and kidney trouble.
In time, all of these false “cures” began to be referred to as snake oil.
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 sought to clamp down on the sale of patent medicines.
After seizing a shipment of Texan Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil in 1917, federal investigators found that it primarily contained mineral oil, a fatty oil believed to be beef fat, red pepper and turpentine. That’s right — Stanley’s Snake Oil did not contain a drop of actual snake oil, and hundreds of consumers discovered they had been had.
It was probably around then that snake oil became symbolic of fraud.
The first written usage of the phrase appeared in Stephen Vincent Benet’s epic 1927 poem John Brown’s Body, when the poet refers to “Crooked creatures of a thousand dubious trades … sellers of snake-oil balm and lucky rings.”
About 30 years later, playwright Eugene O’Neill referred to snake oil in his 1956 play The Iceman Cometh, when a character suggested that a rival was “standing on a street corner in hell right now, making suckers of the damned, telling them there’s nothing like snake oil for a bad burn.”
Paris has been sold stuff that would make a snake oil promoter blush. Its been a conspiracy of organizations claiming to be in charge of community and economic development. They used a local news media reluctantly repeating “the news” – even when known as questionable (but fear a loss of advertising income from not toeing the line) – or those who happily report stupidity they believe in . . .
And by voters who never had a voice for a better choice.
‘Til now.