Snake oil wasn’t always a scam.

Elixirs display

In the popular lexicon, “snake oil” refers to a scam product or bogus claim, particularly related to health. That connotation originated with one of history’s most notorious American hucksters, Clark Stanley, who sold “snake oil” he claimed would cure pain and rheumatism in the late 19th century.

Stanley would demonstrate to audiences how he would kill and boil a rattlesnake, letting its fat rise to the surface. But his Snake Oil Liniment was, to be clear, a scam. Not only were his claims about rattlesnake fat unverified, but the actual product he was selling didn’t even contain snake oil — it was a combination of capsaicin from chili peppers, mineral oil, turpentine, and tallow, probably from beef.

If Stanley’s supposed cure-all had contained a specific kind of snake oil, it might have been at least somewhat effective. Oil from Chinese water snakes has been used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine to treat arthritis and other joint pain. Railroad laborers who immigrated to the U.S. from China shared it with other workers after long, painful days, which may have contributed to the popularity of generic snake oil as a treatment.

Modern research has shown this particular Chinese snake oil may indeed have health benefits. It’s packed with more omega-3 fatty acid than salmon, and may help with improving cognitive function, reducing blood pressure, and lessening inflammation. Genuine rattlesnake oil, on the other hand, is, well, snake oil — in every sense.

By the Numbers

Did you know?

Snakes evolved three times faster than lizards.

Today, we have snakes in just about every kind of habitat, from the ocean floor to deserts to treetops, and in sizes ranging from a few inches to several yards long. On an evolutionary timeline, snakes achieved that diversity much more quickly than other species, and on a grander scale, according to research completed in 2024.

More than 100 million years ago, some prehistoric species of lizard started losing their legs, and snakes became snakes practically overnight. And it wasn’t just universal snake traits such as flexible skulls that came in rapidly. Over the next 66 million years, snakes also went through what evolutionary biologists call adaptive radiation, developing traits highly specialized to their environment. (For comparison, it took hundreds of millions of years for Homo sapiens to evolve.) Some snakes were able to eat prey that lizards couldn’t, some developed infrared vision, and some became venomous. Despite their common ancestors, snakes evolved as much as three times faster than lizards.