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Snake Oil and Holy Water is also the title of a well-known essay by Richard Dawkins attacking alternative medicine, and Snake Oil is the title of a book by John Diamond on the same topic.
The term was originally used for a type of 19th century patent medicine sold in the U. S., and claimed to contain snake fat, supposedly an American Native remedy for various ailments. A classic example is Stanley's snake oil, produced by Clark Stanley , the "Rattlesnake King". His liniment, tested by the federal government in 1917, was found to contain mineral oil, 1% fatty oil (presumed to be beef fat ), red pepper, turpentineTurpentine is a fluid obtained by distillation from resin obtained from trees, mainly various species of pine Pinus . It is composed of terpenes, mainly the monoterpenes alpha-pinene and beta-pinene. It is also known colloquially as turps''. Important pin and camphorCamphor also known as 1,7,7-trimethyl-bicyclo(2,2,1)heptan-2-one, d camphor, d (+)-camphor, (+)-2-bornanone, d-2-bornanone, 1,7,7-Trimethylnorcamphor, 2-Camphanone, 2-camphonone, Bornan-2-one, or Caladryl has the chemical formula C H O. General Name Camph.
In time, snake oil became a generic name for any medicine, ' patentA patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a government to an inventor or applicant for a limited amount of time (normally 20 years from the filing date). The term "patent" originates from the term patere which means to lay open (to public inspectioed' or not, typically marketed as a panaceaIn Greek mythology, Panacea ("all-healing") was a daughter of Asclepius and Salus (or Epione). She was the personification of healing through herbs. A universal panacea is a cure-all, either physical medication or a solution to a problem. The term is most or miraculous remedy, whose ingredients were usually secret, unidentified, or mis-characterized, and mostly inert or ineffective. At best, such ingredients as alcoholIn general usage, alcohol (from Arabic al-khwl , or al-ghawl ) refers almost always to ethanol, also known as grain alcohol and often to any beverage that contains ethanol (see alcoholic beverage . This sense underlies the term alcoholism ( addiction to a and stimulants, as well as the placebo effectThe placebo effect (also known as non-specific effects is the phenomenon that a patient's symptoms can be alleviated by an otherwise ineffective treatment, apparently because the individual expects or believes that it will work. Some people consider this, might provide some temporary relief for whatever the problem might have been. The term is usually derogatory as, in those cases for which effective remedies actually do exist, snake oil is form of quackeryQuackery is the practice of fraudulent medicine, usually in order to make money or for ego gratification and power. Those who practise quackery are called quacks and are in the business of selling false hope to gullible people who may be genuinely sufferi and can be damaging, up to and including, avoidable death. The title of Dawkins's essay (noted above) is an example of this use.
The snake oil peddler was an historical and folkloric figure of the American Old West, often featured in Western movies: a travelling "doctor" with dubious credentials, selling some patent medicine — such as snake oil — with boisterous marketing hype, often supported by pseudo-scientific evidence. Less scientifically, but perhaps even more effectively from an immediate sales viewpoint, an accomplice in the crowd would often 'attest' the value of the product in an effort to provoke buying enthusiasm. The "doctor" would prudently leave town before his customers realized that they had been cheated.
W. C. Fields hilariously (and probably not too inaccurately) portrayed a back-of-the-buckboard snake oil barker (complete with audience shill) on the American frontier in My Little Chickadee (1940). The English musician and comedy writer Vivian Stanshall satirised a miracle cosmetic as "Rillago - the great ape repellent" and many of J. B. Morton 's Beachcomber books and radio programmes included short spoof advertisements for "Snibbo" a fictional treatment allegedly tackling various unlikely human conditions.The practice of selling dubious remedies for real (or imagined) ailments has hardly been limited to 19th century America. It still occurs today, even in "sophisticated" parts of the world. Only the marketing techniques have changed with the introduction of new methods of reaching potential victims (or as purveyors would perhaps prefer, 'purchasers' or 'customers').