14-05-2025
QuickCheck: Was there a real, medicinal snake oil?
FOR decades, the term 'snake oil' has come to mean something worthless that has been promised to be a cure-all; it is a term synonymous with fake or fraudulent medicine that does not do as advertised.
Indeed, the term came about in the 19th Century and the first two decades of the 20th century because of products proclaimed to contain 'snake oil' that when tested were found to contain nothing from a snake at all – what more their fats or other oils.
That said, it has also been claimed that the oil of some snakes actually has medicinal properties and that it is this that led to people latching on to create these fake 'snake oil' products.
Is this true?
VERDICT:
TRUE
It might come as a shock to some, but there is a historical basis that led to the creation of the fake snake oils that coined the term as we know it today.
This was outlined in a 2015 article in the official journal of The Royal Pharmaceutical Society in the United Kingdom by Andrew Haines, who linked it to Chinese labourers brought into the United States in the 1840s to work on constructing the Transcontinental Railroad.
'They would almost certainly have brought with them oil from the Chinese water-snake (Laticauda semifasciata, black-banded sea krait), which in traditional Chinese medicine has been used for centuries as an anti-inflammatory agent to treat arthritis, bursitis and other joint pains,' says Haines.
He adds in his article in The Pharmaceutical Journal that these labourers may have helped their fellow workers out by offering snake oil to them as relief after long days of back-breaking work.
However, would this oil have actually had any medical benefit? According to Haines, the answer is yes.
'Modern-day research suggests that Chinese water-snake oil may indeed have health benefits because of its high content of omega-3 fatty acids.
In 1989, an analysis of snake oil bought in San Francisco's Chinatown found that it contained 20 per cent eicosapentaenoic acid, which is more than is found in popular omega-3 food sources such as salmon,' he writes in his January 2025 article.
This was also referenced in a 2007 Scientific America article, in which writer Cynthia Graber cites the 1989 study performed by California-based psychiatrist Richard Kunin.
In her article, Graber writes that Kunin visited San Francisco's Chinatown to buy such snake oil and analyse it. He also acquired two live rattlesnakes and extracted their fat sacks to come up with the article he published in the Western Journal of Medicine in 1989.
'Chinese water-snake oil contains 20% eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), one of the two types of omega-3 fatty acids most readily used by our bodies.
In comparison, the rattlesnakes had only 8.5% EPA. And salmon, one of the most popular food sources of omega-3s, contains a maximum of 18% EPA, lower than that of snake oil,' she writes.
So with the research, maybe there's something to snake oil after all – as long as it's from the right snake, of course.
References
the-history-of-snake-oil
article/snake-oil-salesmen- knew-something/
