Towards the third quarter of the 19th Century, when the West was busy being won, travelling 'salesmen' used to roam Arizona, California and Nevada - the so called tri-State area. Of course, the States were not as they are now but the principle still applies. These salesmen or Travelling Medicine Shows as they were known used to wander from town to town with wooden crates packed full of oil of mysterious properties and a bunch of henchmen that would testify to the healing properties of the elixirs. This ointment would solve any health issue you can name, it was also sold as a general cleaner, perfect for use with animals or as a bringer of health, wealth and good fortune all round. The idea was an old Chinese one (with some medical credence for alleviating rheumatism), but mis-used in the new land of opportunity that was opening up by the 1880s or so.
Roll up, roll up come and try our new improved, even better than before, Snake Oil! If you ain't ill, it'll fix your car (a particularly good Big Audio Dynamite line that I'm lifting to make the point!).
The salesmen are still around - in fact they exist everywhere in the world. These days they can be found fronting a whole industry of homeopathic medicines, so called tinctures drawn from root 'holy water' containing one part in ten billion or so of some mystical active ingredient. They are also found wherever you place your money, offering higher and higher rates of return for doing absolutely nothing. Give others your money and they'll give you your very own franchised snake oil sales operation with 'unlimited earnings potential' through addressing envelopes or selling people 'water purifiers'.
In the UK we have a particularly large and organised snake oil sales team, selling people their lifestyle products - from food to clothes, car insurance to bank accounts, children's remedies to funerals. (As an aside my next door neighbour appears very pleased with her new shirt bought from this Medicine Show, and it only cost about £12 apparently? That and a load of chinese child sweat in some unregulated hovel in Quangdong Province luvvie - maybe you should send one of your two daughters there for a while and she can bring you back some more shirts?)
This particular Medicine Show just posted a record £3bn+ profit figure today.
Every little clearly helps them.
To paraphrase and mis-quote another famous line: Ask not what Tesco can do for you, but what Tesco will do you for next?
...for some interesting modern snake oil remedies see Wired's page here
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