The term 'Snake Oil Salesman' is used to refer to any business selling a product that has no scientific backing, based in quackery or generally fraudulent in nature.

It may come as no surprise that the term originates from China, but the truth behind the story may surprise you...

History

Back in the day, between 1849 and 1882, an estimated 180,000 Chinese workers immigrated to the USA to construct the transcontinental railroad that makes it most of the way from the West cost to the East coast.

Mostly peasants from Southeastern China, the job was a long-term, low wage contract that, like in China, resorted to their own 'Traditional remedies' to cure various ailments.

The story goes that snake oil was one of the better medicines that had some effective anti-inflammatory effects which spreaed via word-of-mouth among the Americans.

The oil came from Chinese Water Snakes, which were somewhat lacking on the North American continent, so later on when Americans tried to sell off fraudulent cures, snake oil was one of the go-to products to try and reproduce. Starting with rattlesnake oil.

Clark Stanley was one such entrepreneur who, at a Chicago exposition:

...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 'Stanley's Snake Oil,' a liniment that was immediately snapped up by the throng that had gathered to watch the spectacle.

Kinda wish I was there to see...

The problem was that rattlesnake oil wasn't even nearly as effective as Chinese water snake, and Stanley's product wasn't even using oil to begin with. What investigators eventually found was that it contained:

...mineral oil, a fatty oil believed to be beef fat, red pepper and turpentine.

From that day forward, Stanley's scam made snake oil symbolic of fraud. Stanley was charged $20 for his crime (a little under $500 equivalent now).

Science

So, does traditional snake oil have any medicinal properties?

YES!

The great irony here is that originally, Snake Oil from this water snake was an effective medicine for inflammation and arthritis, heart disease and even depression.

Now, the title of this post still includes 'pseudoscience', and I stand by that because It's highly unlikely 2,000 years ago that snake oil was discovered to be beneficial through a legit modern scientific method, but more from trial and error from slaughtering thousands of species and rubbing various guts all over oneself. This does lead to results eventually, though often with unknown, dangerous side effects.

Omega 3

Snake oil does appear to be a legitimate medicine, primarily due to its high concentration of the fatty acid Omega 3.

You'll all likely be familiar with this by now since it's peddled as a miracle cure all over the world. But they are somewhat special, unique compared to other fats. They allow enzymes to function more efficiently due to their comparatively dynamic nature.

In fact, we do need Omega-3 in our diet because unlike other fats, this one isn't produced within us. We normally turn to fish for this source of fat but generally a western diet lacks the amount we should usually take in.

Salmon is the usual solution, which contains about 18% Omega-3, which is a pretty good source, and it's one of the less disgusting tasting fish out there. Snake oil on the other hand, has around 20% Omega 3, blowing Salmon out of the water, so to speak.

But it has to be Chinese water snake. Rattlesnakes contain only 8.5% by comparison, and it's likely because the water snake spends a lot of time in cold water. Because Omega-3 doesn't harden in cold environments, it tends to proliferate in cold animals in cold environments.

The research backs this all up. Japanese researchers found that snake oil notably improved in cognitive and physical abilities such as in swimming and maze running when compared to other control mice.

So if you're feeling depressed or achey, maybe it's time to visit the snake oil salesman after all... or is it?

The other side of the coin

Remember a few paragraphs ago when I said Chinese medicine often comes with unknown side effects? The same goes here.

If this was all true, it would imply that snake oil isn't actually the true source of health, but simply the component that happens to reside within. We'd be better of just downing Omega 3 pills and be done with it.

But taking supplements is really not the way to go about healthy living and not only is it largely ineffective, it's often dangerous.

Sometimes, a doctor will prescribe vitamins or oils based on your current deficiency or other ailment. For Omega 3, it may be prescribed if you have high levels of blood triglyceride.

For everybody else, fish and other foods contain a lot more than the one or 2 vitamins that you need to survive, otherwise we could just live off tubs of sugar and vitamin pills.

As it stands, fish contains all kinds of minerals, vitamins and so on that your body needs a good balance of.

If you don’t eat fish or other seafood, you can get omega-3s from ground flaxseed or flaxseed oil, chia seeds, walnuts, canola oil, and soy oil. -
Howard LeWine, M.D.

If you want to reduce your risk of heart disease, you might be out of luck. Italian researchers found that if have a certain level of risk factor for heart disease, no amount of omega 3 in the world is going to change that.

This can be dangerous because as long as the belief that omega is some godly substance prevails, people start declining real medical help in replacement for more alternative sources such as this, without a clue that it's actually having no effect at all. While they think they might be improving, their body is slowly leading up to heart attacks or other problems.

Generally if you're in it to be healthy, just use common sense. Michael Pollan once famously suggested:

Eat food. Not too much. Mainly plants.

Try that out for a while and see how you feel.