The expression “snake oil salesman” is one of the most colorful insults in the English language, and today it means much more than someone who literally sells a dubious medicine. A snake oil salesman is a person who promotes something as valuable, effective, or miraculous when it is actually worthless, deceptive, or seriously exaggerated. The expression can describe a dishonest salesperson, a charlatan, a con artist, or anyone making extravagant promises about a product, service, investment, or idea.
The phrase grew out of the nineteenth-century American patent-medicine business, when traveling vendors could make extraordinary claims about supposedly miraculous cures with little or no scientific evidence to support them. The story is actually more complicated than the popular image suggests because genuine snake oil existed before it became a symbol of fraud.
Chinese water-snake oil had a long history in traditional Chinese medicine and was valued as a topical remedy. Chinese immigrants who came to the American West during the nineteenth century, including workers associated with the construction of the transcontinental railroad, brought knowledge of the
preparation and use of snake oil with them. Chinese water-snake oil contains substantial amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, and it is possible that it provided some genuine benefit as a topical anti-inflammatory preparation. The historical existence of legitimate snake oil is important because it means that the expression did not originally arise simply from the idea that all snake oil was inherently fake. During the nineteenth century,
however, American entrepreneurs began selling products advertised as snake oil, often claiming that they could cure an astonishing variety of ailments. The booming patent-medicine industry provided fertile ground for such claims. Medicines were advertised in newspapers, sold through drugstores and mail order, and promoted at traveling medicine shows. Sellers could attract crowds with demonstrations, colorful stories, dramatic testimonials, and claims of secret formulas.
At a time when there was no modern system requiring medicines to demonstrate safety and effectiveness before being marketed, an aggressive salesman could turn an inexpensive mixture into a highly profitable “miracle cure.” The person most closely associated with the expression is Clark Stanley, who called himself the “Rattlesnake King.” Stanley was born around 1854 and claimed that he had worked as a cowboy before learning the
secrets of snake oil from a Hopi medicine man in Arizona. His own account of his life helped create the colorful legend surrounding him, although some of his claims cannot be independently verified. Stanley eventually developed and promoted Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment, presenting himself as an expert on the supposed medicinal properties of rattlesnake oil. Stanley understood that selling the spectacle could be just as important as selling the bottle. At medicine shows, he reportedly demonstrated his product by taking live rattlesnakes from a sack, killing them, and placing them in boiling water.
He would then skim the fat from the surface and present it as the basis of his snake oil. The dramatic performance gave customers the impression that they were witnessing the production of a genuine and exotic medicine rather than simply buying an ordinary liniment. In 1893, Stanley and his rattlesnakes attracted considerable attention at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, helping make his product nationally famous. Stanley claimed that his liniment could treat numerous forms of pain and physical disability.
Like many patent medicines of the period, it was presented as a remarkably versatile remedy rather than a narrowly defined treatment. Customers were encouraged to believe that the mysterious substance possessed properties that conventional medicine either did not understand or could not provide. The combination of a persuasive salesman, a dramatic demonstration, exotic ingredients, testimonials, and promises of relief was an extremely effective marketing formula. The problem for Stanley was that the government eventually examined what he was actually selling. Following the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, federal authorities gained greater ability to investigate fraudulent and misleading medical products.
Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment was analyzed in the 1910s, and investigators discovered that it contained no meaningful amount of snake oil. Instead, the preparation consisted principally of mineral oil, along with fatty material believed to be beef fat and ingredients such as capsicum, camphor, and turpentine. In other words, the famous “snake oil” being sold by the Rattlesnake King was not what its name and marketing suggested. Stanley was subsequently prosecuted for misbranding the product and was fined. This exposure helped transform “snake oil” from the name of a dubious patent medicine into a powerful metaphor for fraud. The phrase “snake oil salesman” developed somewhat later than “snake oil” itself. Historical evidence indicates that “snake oil” had already acquired a figurative meaning associated with worthless remedies and deceptive claims, while the specific expression “snake oil salesman” became established during the twentieth century. One linguistic history places the earliest recorded use of the full expression in 1933.
The expression survived because it perfectly captured an enduring type of con artist. A snake oil salesman does not necessarily have to sell medicine. The essential characteristic is the promise of something that sounds wonderful but cannot deliver what has been promised. A person selling a miracle investment that supposedly cannot lose money, a product advertised as a cure for virtually everything, a business opportunity promising effortless wealth, or a technological
invention presented as the solution to every problem can all be described metaphorically as “snake oil.” The word has therefore moved far beyond medicine and become a general term for deceptive marketing and empty promises. Politics has also provided countless examples of the expression. Politicians who promise impossibly simple solutions to complicated problems have sometimes been called snake oil salesmen, as have political commentators,
activists, and campaigners whose claims are regarded as exaggerated or misleading. The expression does not necessarily mean that every claim made by the person is false; rather, calling someone a snake oil salesman suggests that the person is deliberately packaging questionable claims in a persuasive sales pitch. The term has consequently become a rhetorical weapon as well as a description of a particular kind of fraud. Business and finance provide another modern application.
A financial promoter who guarantees enormous returns with virtually no risk might be called a snake oil salesman. So might a consultant who promises that a single expensive program will solve every problem a company has, or an online entrepreneur who claims to have discovered a secret formula for instant wealth. The metaphor works because the basic sales
technique is the same one used by the old medicine-show hucksters: identify something people desperately want, promise an extraordinary solution, create an aura of expertise or mystery, and persuade customers to hand over their money. The expression has even become a useful warning about scientific and medical misinformation. Products advertised as miraculous cures without credible evidence are
often dismissed as snake oil, although modern medicine requires considerably more evidence than nineteenth-century patent-medicine sellers were expected to provide. The lesson of the original snake-oil era is therefore still relevant: extraordinary claims deserve scrutiny, especially when the person making them relies more heavily on testimonials, dramatic demonstrations, secret formulas, or emotional promises than on reliable evidence. There is also an ironic twist to the story. The popular legend tends to portray snake oil itself as a completely
fictitious substance invented by American fraudsters, but genuine snake oil had existed in Chinese medicinal traditions, and some nineteenth-century American products may actually have contained animal-derived oils. What made Clark Stanley infamous was not simply the use of snake oil but the extraordinary claims surrounding his product and, ultimately, the discovery that his celebrated liniment did not contain the snake oil he claimed to be selling. Thus, the real history behind the
expression is more interesting than the simplified legend. Today, when someone is called a “snake oil salesman,” nobody expects to find a bottle of rattlesnake oil in the person’s briefcase. The phrase has become a compact way of saying that someone is selling an attractive promise rather than a reliable solution. Its endurance for nearly a century reflects how recognizable the underlying behavior remains. From the dusty medicine shows of the nineteenth-century American West to television commercials, financial promotions,
internet advertisements, political campaigns, and social media, the basic temptation is unchanged: people want easy answers to difficult problems, and there will always be someone willing to sell them. That is why “snake oil salesman” remains such an effective expression for the professional persuader whose product is ultimately less valuable than the story used to sell it.
Further Reading
Sources
- The Pharmaceutical Journal “The history of snake oil” https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/opinion/the-history-of-snake-oil
- Science Insights “Is Snake Oil Real? How a Remedy Became a Symbol of Fraud” https://scienceinsights.org/is-snake-oil-real-how-a-remedy-became-a-symbol-of-fraud/
- Collectors Weekly “How Snake Oil Got a Bad Rap (Hint: It Wasn’t The Snakes’ Fault)” https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/how-snake-oil-got-a-bad-rap/
- Ancient Origins “Snake Oil Has Long Been Deemed A ‘Fake Medicine’, But It’s Not Guilty, It Really Does Cure!” https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/snake-oil-0011317
- Scientific American “Snake Oil Salesmen Were on to Something” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/snake-oil-salesmen-knew-something/
- Atlas Obscura “The Serpentine Story of Snake Oil, Or How I Came to Buy Snake Oil from Amazon.com” https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-serpentine-story-of-snake-oil-or-how-i-came-to-buy-snake-oil-from-amazoncom
