by Joe Nickell
McCampbell, James M. 1976. UFOLOGY: A Major Breakthrough in the Scientific Understanding of Unidentified Flying Objects. Millbrae, Calif.: Celestial Arts.
Nickell, Joe. 1984. The “Hangar 18” Tales: A Folkloristic Approach. Common Ground (England), June.
———. 1988. Inquest on the Shroud of Turin,s updated edition. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus.
Palmer, Ray. 1951. New report on the flying saucers. Fate, Jan., 63-81.
Sachs, Margaret. 1980. The UFO Encyclopedia. New York: Perigree.
Stringfield, Leonard H. 1977. Situation Red: The UFO Siege. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
———. 1980. The UFO Crash/Retrieval Syndrome. Seguin, Tex.: MUFON.
Story, Ronald D. 1980. The Encyclopedia of UFOs. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
Vallee, Jacques. 1969. Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers. Chicago: Henry Regnery.
Chapter 25
In Search of “Snake Oil”
“Snake oil”—the expression has come to be synonymous with a quack remedy. But questions about the origins of the term provide the basis for an interesting investigation. Although considered quintessentially American, patent medicines actually originated in England. The recipient of the first royal patent for a medicinal compound is unknown, but the second was granted to Richard Stoughton’s Elixir in 1712. By mid-eighteenth century, an incomplete list included 202 “proprietary” medicines—those protected by patent or registration. Relatively few of the ready-made medicines were actually patented—which required disclosure of their ingredients—but rather had their brand name registered. Nevertheless, the term patent medicine has become generic for all self-prescribed nostrums and cure-alls.
Shipments of patent medicines were halted by the Revolutionary War, and American entrepreneurs took the opportunity to meet the demand. Post-war nationalism and cheaper prices of the nonimported medicines helped American vendors maintain their lead over English suppliers (Munsey 1970). Among the notable patent medicine men and women were Perry Davis, whose painkiller became famous in the 1849 cholera epidemic and was subsequently spread worldwide by missionaries who used it as a cure-all for heathen sufferers; Lydia E. Pinkham, whose portrait on her “Vegetable Compound,” first marketed in 1875, made her the most widely recognized American woman of her day; the Kilmer brothers, Andral and Jonas, who moved to Binghamton, New York, in 1879 and were soon selling Swamp Root kidney and liver medicine and other “family remedies” from a palatial eight-story building; the trio of “Doc” Healy, “Texas Charlie“ Bigelow, and “Nevada Ned” Oliver, who originated the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company in 1881; and Mrs. Violet Blossom, who as “Lotus Blossom“ ran a medicine show with her husband in the early 1900s and became known as “the queen of pitch doctors” (Holbrook 1959).
Among the most fascinating peddlers were one-time preacher Fletcher Sutherland and his seven daughters, whose hair had a collective length of thirty-seven feet. When the young ladies performed their vocal and instrumental concerts—at such venues as the 1881 Atlanta Exposition and, by 1884, Barnum and Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth—Fletcher Sutherland shrewdly observed that the girls’ long hair was a greater attraction than their musical ability. This led him to create the “Seven Sutherland Sisters Hair Grower,” a concoction of alcohol, vegetable oils, and water. The fifth daughter, Naomi, married Henry Bailey, a circus employee, who expanded the family sideline into a business that grossed $90,000 the first year. By the time Naomi died unexpectedly in 1893, business was so good that to keep up appearances the remaining sisters hired a replacement. The hair-growing business thrived until 1907, then declined slowly over the next decade when the bobbed-hair fad nearly put an end to sales. Overall, their hair grower and related products brought in more than $2.75 million over a thirty-eight-year period, but the septet squandered it on an opulent lifestyle that included each having a personal maid to comb her luxuriant tresses (Lewis 1991).
The medicine peddlers used a number of tricks and stunts. The larger traveling shows, employing advance men to herald their arrival, entered town with circuslike fanfare, typically with a band leading the procession of wagons. Skits and other diversions were used to attract audiences, who eventually were treated to the “Lecture” (which, when medicine shows expanded into radio, became the commercial). Assistants who moved through the crowds were often garbed as Quakers to lend an air of moral respectability. Native Americans were frequently recruited to promote the notion of “natural” medicine, which was given names like Wright’s Indian Vegetable Pills, Seminole Cough Balsam, and various Kickapoo cures (Holbrook 1959,196-215; Munsey 1970).
A major component of most tonics, “cures,” bitters, and other nostrums was alcohol. During the Temperance era, the patent medicines were often sipped—with a wink—“for medicinal purposes,” leading the promoters of Old Dr. Kaufmann’s Great Sulphur Bitters to advise the public: “Never Use Cheap Rum Drinks Which Are Called Medicine.” Interestingly, the manufacturers never felt obliged to disclose the alcohol content of their product (Holbrook 1959,159). The alcohol—as well as the placebo effect—explains why the nostrums often won testimonials from their purchasers, who felt better and so believed they had been helped rather than victimized.
In time, worthless cure-alls came to be known as “snake oil.” The origin of the term is uncertain. One source asserts, “There is no such thing as snakeoil though many thousands of bottles containing stuff called snakeoils were sold to gullible patrons of carnival sideshows in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries” (Morris and Morris 1988). Actually, real snake oil was prized for its supposed medicinal properties. In 1880, for example, a newspaper article about a Pennsylvania man—“a celebrated hunter, trapper and snake-tamer by the name of John Geer”—told how he killed rattlesnakes and extracted “oil from their bodies.” The article stated: “this oil is very useable and sells readily for $1 per ounce. It is said to have great curative powers” (“Killing Snakes” 1880). Interestingly, the term “snake medicine” was a slang expression for whiskey, used as early as 1865 (Cragie and Hurlbert 1944). I once saw a bottle in a private collection with a label upon which was actually penned “Snake Oil” and that (if memory serves me) may have dated from the mid-nine teenth century or even earlier.
In any event, a cowboy named Clark Stanley, who called himself “The Rattlesnake King,” sold a Snake Oil Liniment that was reputedly “good for man and beast.” In 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Stanley is said to have held crowds spellbound as, dressed in colorful western garb, he slaughtered hundreds of rattlesnakes, processing the juices into the cure-all. A circa 1890s advertisement described Stanley’s snake oil as “A wonderful pain destroying compound.” It was “the strongest and best liniment known for the cure of all pain and lameness.” To be “used external [sic] only,” it treated “rheumatism, neuralgia, sciatica, lame back, lumbago, contracted muscles, toothache, sprains, swellings, etc.” It also, the ad said, “cures frost bites, chill blains, bruises, sore throat, [and] bites of animals, insects and reptiles,” in fact being “good for every thing a liniment should be good for.” Promising “immediate relief,” it sold for fifty cents a bottle (Fowler, 1997, vi, 10-12). Stanley claimed the secret recipe came from a Moki Pueblo Indian medicine man. (Reportedly, some Native Americans, including the Choctaws, did treat rheumatism and other ills with applications of rattlesnake grease.) In 1917, however, tests of a federally seized shipment of Snake Oil Liniment revealed it to be mostly mineral oil containing about one percent fatty oil (thought to have been beef fat), along with some red pepper (probably to impart a soothing warmth to the skin) and possible traces of turpentine and camphor (perhaps to provide a suitably medicinal smell) (Fowler 1997, 11-12).
Figure 25.1. “Snake oil“ came to refer to any patent medicine, but this bottle is actually embossed, “Known as Snake Oil.“ (Photo by Joe Nickell)
The bottle shown in the accompanying photograph (a gift to the author from skeptic Robert
Price of Bloomfield, Connecticut) is from one of Stanley’s many imitators. While the front of the embossed bottle reads “Known as Snake Oil,” the sides inform that it is “Miller’s Antiseptic Oil” sold by the “Herb Juice Medicine Co.” The exact date is unknown, but the bottle was produced by an automatic glassblowing machine, which means it was manufactured after the turn of the century (see Munsey 1970,33). Another imitator, probably inspired by the 1909 Centennial of the sixteenth president’s birth, called his product Lincoln Oil. As indicated by a handbill in my collection, it supposedly worked from head to toe, curing toothache and corns alike.
Toward the close of the horse-and-buggy era, the sale of patent medicines had become immense and so had the resulting victimization of the American public. A backlash came in the form of a campaign launched in 1905 by Collier’s magazine against what it called “The Great American Fraud.” Although the patent-medicine lobby in the U.S. Congress proved potent (not unlike today’s tobacco lobby), the tide was eventually turned and the federal Pure Food and Drug Act became law on January 1,1907 (Munsey 1970; Holbrook 1959,3-4). Of course, not all of the tonics and cures were deliberately bogus. Some derived from homespun remedies that—by trial and error—were sometimes found to be effective treatments. Books of “receipts” (recipes) usually included a large section of home remedies (Marquart 1867). Among my own ancestors were a couple of eastern Kentucky folk doctors, James Harrison Murphy (1843-1923) and his wife Martha Baker (1849-1917), who relied on such medicines. Harry gathered the herbs and roots for their remedies, which included a “blood tonic” (that was brewed, sweetened, and mixed with alcohol), along with a vermifuge and horehound tea. Martha administered the nostrums and offered other treatments such as lancing boils and setting broken bones (Nickell 1978).
In addition to folk remedies, quasi-pharmaceutical “receipts,” and recipes allegedly obtained from Indian medicine men, there were other sources of patent-medicine formulas. Some proprietors, like Fletcher Sutherland, seemed to rely on sheer inspiration. Mrs. J.H.R. Matteson of Buffalo, New York, went a step further, offering (according to an embossed bottle in my collection) “Clairvoyant Remedies.” Then there was simple imitation: the success of Paine’s Celery Compound (“A Nerve Tonic”) prompted other manufacturers to offer Celery Bitters, Celery Malt Compound, and Celery Crackers, as well as products called Celerena and Celery-Vesce (Holbrook 1959, 52-53).
Implementation of the Pure Food and Drug Act forced many medicines off the market and compelled others to change their advertising or product content, or both. But sale of patent and proprietary medicines continued, including Princess Tonic Hair Restorer (which was guaranteed to be “absolutely harmless”), Dr. Worden’s Female Pills (for “Female Diseases and Troubles, Peculiar to the Sex and Women’s Delicate System”), a product called Vin Vitae (or “Wine of Life,” a “tonic stimulant” that listed among its ingredients port wine and coca eaves, the source of cocaine), Dr. McBain’s Blood Pills (“a blood cleanser and purifier”), and Princess brand Hair Restorer and Bust Developer (both reassuringly described as completely harmless and sporting money-back guarantees). Such products were sold by mail-order companies (Sears 1909), drug and other retail stores, and traveling salesmen. One of the latter was “Snake-Oil Johnnie” McMahon (great-grandfather of former Free Inquiry editor Tim Madigan), who sold his wares in New Jersey during the 1920s.
Today, nonprescription medicines are more carefully regulated, but a new form of snake oil is on the rise. Broadly termed “alternative medicine,” it includes treatments ranging from the dubious to the bizarre, from acupuncture to zone therapy (Raso 1996). Some of the new versions of snake-oil-like aromatherapy oils and the resurgent homeopathic “remedies” (which supposedly restore the “vital force”)—even come in bottles.
References
Craigie, William A., and James R. Hurlbert. 1944. A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, IV: 2161.
Fowler, Gene, ed. 1997. Mystic Healers and Medicine Shows. Santa Fe, N.M.: Ancient City.
Holbrook, Stewart H. 1959. The Golden Age of Quackery. New York: Macmillan.
Killing snakes for a living. 1880. The Spectator (Hamilton, Ontario), Aug. 7, 3.I am most grateful to Ranjit Sandhu for discovering this significant 1880 newspaper article.
Lewis, Clarence O. 1991.The Seven Sutherland Sisters. Lockport, N.Y.: Niagara County Historical Society.
Marquart, John. 1867. Six Hundred Receipts … Reprinted Paducah, Ky.: Troll.
Morris, William, and Mary Morris. 1988. Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origin. 2nd ed. New York: Harper & Row, 535.
Munsey, Cecil. 1970. The Illustrated Guide to Collecting Bottles. New York: Hawthorn, 65-75.
Nickell, Joe. 1978. “Notes on James Harrison Murphy and His Wife, Martha Baker Murphy," in Lucille N. Haney, Lineage of John Curren Nickell and Emma Golden Murphy (Lexington, Ky.: Privately printed, 1987), 71-72.
Raso, Jack. 1996. The Dictionary of Metaphysical Healthcare. Loma Linda, Calif.: National Council Against Health Fraud.
Sears, Roebuck and Co. 1909. Consumers Guide. Reprinted New York: Ventura, 1979, 380-403.
Chapter 26
The Haunted Cathedral
Built between 1845 and 1853, Christ Church Cathedral in Fredericton, New Brunswick, is considered “one of the most fascinating ecclesiastical buildings in Canada” (Trueman 1975). Certainly with its imposing spire and lofty interior arches it represents an excellent example of Gothic Revival architecture (figure 26.1). Supposedly, the Anglican sanctuary also has a resident spirit.
Some describe only a vague sense of a presence, while others say a shadowy figure has been sighted—reportedly the ghost of Mrs. John Medley, wife of the first bishop. Just who is alleged to have seen her usually goes unreported, but according to a former assistant curate, the Reverend David Mercer, “She’s supposed to come up Church Street and enter by the west door. What she does after that, I really don’t know” (Trueman 1975, 85). One source of apparent late vintage attempted to supply the motive: in life the faithful Mrs. Medley had been accustomed to carry her husband’s dinner to him at the church, a practice she supposedly rehearsed after she passed into spirithood (“Haunted” 1999). Unfortunately, this charming tale was debunked when I visited the Medleys’ graves, located just beyond the east end of the cathedral (figure 26.2).As carved inscriptions made clear, it was the bishop who passed first, in 1892, his widow living on to 1905. Even a local storyteller, who had often repeated the anecdote about the dutiful ghost but who accompanied me to the grave site, quickly conceded that the tale lost rationale in light of this evidence (“Haunted” 1999). Another “it-is-said” source claims Mrs. Medley’s alleged visitations are malevolent, resulting from her extreme dislike of her husband’s successor (Dearborn 1996), while still another states that the perambulating spirit merely “surveys the Cathedral, as if in wonderment, and then disappears” (Colombo 1988).Such variant tales are an obvious indication of the human tendency for legend-making.
Figure 26.1. “Haunted” Christ Church Cathedral in Fredericton, New
Brunswick, Canada.
Figure 26.2. Graves of Bishop John Medley and his wife, the latter’s ghost being reported to haunt the sanctuary.
I talked with two elderly churchgoers (each with about fortyfive years’ membership) and a young tour guide, none of whom had ever seen a ghost in the church. The latter stated that the notion the cathedral was haunted was not supported by current parishioners and was largely regarded as folklore (Meek 1999). The impetus for ghostly inklings may well have been the cathedral’s own “spooky atmosphere” and indeed “haunted air”—an effect stemming from the somber setting and play of subdued light and shadow, and heightened by the presence of a stone cenotaph, its figure of Bishop Medley recumbent in death (Trueman 1975). (See figure 26.3.) Such an atmosphere, admits one writer, is “enough to spark the most dormant imagination” (Dearborn 1996).
Figure 26.3. Stone cenotaph of B
ishop Medley, which helps add to “spooky atmosphere” of the cathedral.
References
Colombo, John Robert. 1988. Mysterious Canada: Strange Sights, Extraordinary Events, and Peculiar Places. Toronto: Doubleday Canada.
Dearborn, Dorothy. 1996. Legends, Oddities & Mysteries … in New Brunswick. St. John, N.B.: Neptune, 15-16.
“Haunted Hike” tour guide. 1999. Personal communication. Fredericton, N.B., June 28.
Meek, Hilary. 1999. Personal communication, June 28.
Trueman, Stuart. 1975.Ghosts, Pirates and Treasure Trove: The Phantoms That Haunt New Brunswick. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 84-85.
Chapter 27
Miracle Photographs
On Friday, October 27,1995, the television program Unsolved Mysteries aired a segment, “Kentucky Visions,” that included investigative work by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. The popular, prime-time television series had requested CSICOP’s opinion of some “miraculous” photographs taken at a recent Virgin Mary sighting at a hillside spot in central Kentucky. This was my first significant case as Senior Research Fellow—or as the narrator termed me, “Paranormal Investigator” (a “P.I.” nonetheless).
The photographs were made by a Sunday school teacher who had visited the Valley Hill site (near Bardstown, Kentucky) with eight girls from her class. I did not see the photographs until the day I was brought on location for filming, but I was sent color photocopies of them in advance. The lack of reproductive quality put me at more of a disadvantage with some photos than with others. I did recognize that the claimed “faces of Jesus and Mary” in one photo were simply due to random, out-of-focus patterns of light and shadow caused by mishandling of the film pack. (More on that later.) I also recognized in another photo the now common effect at Marian apparition sites, a phenomenon known as the “golden door.” This is an arched-door shape, filled with golden light and believed by some to be the doorway to heaven mentioned in Revelation 4:1. In fact, as explained in an earlier Skeptical Inquirer (winter 1993), it is simply an artifact of the Polaroid OneStep camera, which when flooded with bright light (as when pointed at the sun or a halogen lamp), produces a picture of the camera’s own aperture (Nickell 1993a) (figure 27.1). This was codiscovered by Georgia Skeptics members Dale Heatherington and Anson Kennedy, who tutored me in making such photos. (Together we have wasted much Polaroid film, all in the interest of scientific experimentation.)