For many centuries, the Chinese used snake oil as a treatment for joint pain, arthritis, and bursitis. They brought this folk remedy with them when they arrived in the US in the mid-1800's to build the Transcontinental Railroad. That was backbreaking work. Synthetic pain-killers such as aspirin were not yet freely available. When the Chinese workers offered their remedy to Westerners as a palliative it was likely perceived to be a "primitive" form of "quackery" by the medical experts of that time. This is one probable origin of the derogatory meaning of the word "snake oil." On the other hand, the word "quack" as used today came from the German word for "quicksilver," namely: "quecksilber" It is believed that American dentists shortened it to "quack" to describe the amalgam-hucksters. Quick-silver Associates write "It is sobering to realize that the original "quacks" were dentists who advocated the use of mercury amalgam." Learn more on this topic by reading "Quacks, Quack Doctors, and Quackery."
Perhaps the most ironic thing about modern pharmaceutical "snake oil," i.e. petrochemical-derived and patented synthetic chemicals, is that they often have considerably less value than a placebo, and in certain cases may not even compare in therapeutic value to actual snake oil. And that is over and above the fact that their safety is many orders of magnitude lower, with pharmaceuticals known to kill well over 100,000 patients each year in the U.S. even when correctly prescribed.
To prove the point further, below are listed four remarkable studies, as cited on the National Library of Medicine's bibliographic database known as Medline, referring to the potential therapeutic properties of sea snake and boa constrictor lipids -- snake oil! -- for inflammation and infection.
Boa constrictor oil has potent anti-inflammatory and significant antimicrobial activity against S. aureus and S. pyrogenes.The point here is that when age-old invectives like "snake-oil" are hurled at those advocating natural approaches to healing by those who would claim synthetic chemicals are the only "real" or evidence-based alternatives, the "insult" itself reveals a subconscious acknowledgement that practically all things produced by Nature have medicinal value and which are often far more effective and safer than synthetic, chemical-derived pharmaceuticals.
Pubmed Data : 1: Acta Pol Pharm. 2008 Jul-Aug;65(4):477-80.
Article Published Date : Jul 01, 2008
Study Type : Human Study
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Erabu sea snake oil has a beneficial effect on plasma glucose in diabetic mice.
Pubmed Data : 1: Ann Nutr Metab. 2006;50(5):425-32. Epub 2006 Jul 17.
Article Published Date : Jan 01, 2006
Study Type : Animal Study
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Erabu sea snake oil improves the swimming endurance of aged mice by attenuating lactate production and enhancing lactate clearance.
Pubmed Data : 1: J Nutr Sci Vitaminol (Tokyo). 2007 Dec;53(6):476-81.
Article Published Date : Dec 01, 2007
Study Type : Animal Study
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Additional Links
Substances : Snake Lipids : CK(15) : AC(4)
The fat from the boa constrictor has an inhibitor effect on keloid and normal dermal fibroblasts, which may contribute to the inhibition of scarring.
Pubmed Data : 1: Br J Plast Surg. 1990 Mar;43(2):183-6.
Article Published Date : Mar 01, 1990
Study Type : In Vitro Study
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NOTE: We don't, of course, advocate consuming snake oil when other powerful, natural, and far more accessible anti-inflammatory fats are available from less sentient sources: flaxseed oil, for instance. Or, if you are really interested in the topic, here are 223 natural substances with demonstrable anti-inflammatory activity, many of which are foods, nutrients, spices and herbs.
Let's look closer at another example of purported "snake oil": the traditional practice among the Maori and Chinese of eating earthworms to settle an upset stomach. Long considered an obscene, disgusting, "folk medicine" practice, these 3 scientific studies tell quite a different story:
Earthworm paste has antioxidant and antiulcer properties superior to the drug ranitidine.In the first two studies, earthworms are shown superior to Ranitidine as an anti-ulcer, gastroprotective agent. Ranitidine is a chemical which blocks the H2-histamine receptors in the parietal cells in the stomach that produce hydrochloric acid, and is sold under the trade name Zantac. Until Zantac lost its patent in 1997, global sales reached 1.6 billion dollars annually. And yet despite these blockbuster sales, its value as a "medicine" compares poorly to the consumption of creatures that live beneath our feet, and who also, incidentally, make possible all the food we consume through their indispensable role in producing fecund soil.
Pubmed Data : Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci. 2007 Jan-Feb;11(1):9-15.
Article Published Date : Jan 01, 2007
Study Type : Animal Study
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Earthworm paste has gastroprotective properties and is superior to the drug ranitidine in preventing experimentally induced gastric ulcer.
Pubmed Data : Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci. 2010 Mar;14(3):171-6.
Article Published Date : Mar 01, 2010
Study Type : Animal Study
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Earthworm powder has antioxidant and hepatoprotective properties against alcohol-induced toxicity in rats.
Pubmed Data : Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci. 2008 Jul-Aug;12(4):237-43.Article Published Date : Jul 01, 2008
Study Type : Animal Study
So which is the "snake-oil," the infatuated object of "quackery"? Synthetic chemicals excreted by a vast petrochemical-medical-industrial complex, and re-purposed and repackaged to the consumer as "medicines" at mark ups thousands of times higher than cost? Or, natural substances and organisms traditionally used as food-medicines, sometimes for thousands of years before the advent of modern, scientism- and drug-driven medicine?
Just for the record, I won't be eating worms any time soon. But given the choice between a chemical, with no biological or evolutionary precedent in my body, and an earthworm or sip of actual snake oil, I will gladly choose the latter.
Be sure to check out the other 40 instances of research showing Science confirming Traditional Medicine from around the world. And use the GreenMedInfo Research Dashboard for instant access to over 10,000+ different natural health topics all supported by the published, peer-reviewed biomedical and life sciences literature.
Sayer Ji is founder of Greenmedinfo.com, a reviewer at the International Journal of Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine,Co-founder and CEO of Systome Biomed, Vice Chairman of the Board of the National Health Federation, Steering Committee Member of the Global Non-GMO Foundation.
But then you have the founder of the Rockefeller dynasty selling crude oil as a cancer cure - which was way more profitable than oil for fuel and he found a company who took the idea and sold it as a laxative - that of course did not work and had horrible effects.
The quicksilver (mercury) 'cures were based on the idea of purging an evil with a toxin. This idea is of course mainstream 'medicine' thanks to the 'philanthropic generosity' of the aforementioned Rockefellers and Carnegie et al - who effectively bought the most prestigious medical institutions and worked to set up regulatory protections for an effective monopoly. (Quicks mutated to quacks).
I came on this quote yesterday that added another facet to the ways of an old magic that effectively makes sacrifice to a god of fear.
The Greek pharmakoi, singular pharmakos, refers to victims who were ritually beaten, driven out of cities, and killed, for example, by being forced over the edge of a precipice. The word pharmakos, designating a person who is selected as a ritual victim, is related to pharmakon, which means both "remedy" and "poison," depending on the context. In the story of the horrible miracle of Apollonius, the beggar is a pharmakos, a kind of ritual victim. Apollonius points to him as the demon causing the plague (he is the source of pollution or poison), but his lynching restores the well being of Ephesus (he becomes the remedy for the crisis). ~ Renรฉ Girard,
This is of course scapegoat magic.
Offering 'medical' frameworks to relieve us of our responsibilities can seem attractive - but then we become victim to demons we cannot dispel because they have hidden them in falsely flagged symptoms and toxic 'remedies' or in modern terms 'sickness management'.
The belief that evils must be purged operates a physicalisation of the fact that conflicting beliefs must be released to find release from conflicted self-sense. Externalising our denials seems to be an escape, temporarily. But all that belongs to us never truly leaves. Paradoxically, when we face our 'shadows' in a deeper quality of honesty and acceptance, we discover that which does NOT belong can now leave - instead of being trapped or entangled in our field by the attempt to push it out or get rid of it. No one tries to escape or get rid of something they do not fear or believe to be true of them - and the feared belief that evil, toxic, or malign intent is within us may be a phished identity theft in which the attempt to secure or protect has taken the bait of a false flag that protects the sickness against healing and runs as a negatively self-reinforcing loop.
The development of subjective human consciousness is one of dislocation and fragmentation - that runs under a narrative of getting or becoming more - and consequently of suffering denial and deprivation as an experience of being so much less that we (truly) are.
Yet it remains so that a call for help, can find its need answered - even within the frameworks of a 'fallen' or mad world - because the true call is in the heart that recognizes wholeness - and can use all kinds of modalities as permission slips to release the baggage and re-engage in Life anew.