Originally Posted By: TheProdigy001
hello,
i read a lot on these forums and i always hear the expression "snake oil".can some one tell me what is considered snake oil exactly.
It was a product of dubious efficacy sold by traveling patent medicine salesmen in the 19th and early 20th centuries in rural America. Although they were commonly called "medicine men" and sold an assortment of remedies and elixers, the term "snake oil salesman" was sometimes applied to them. Some would travel in wagons loaded with their goods and put on shows in towns and villages for the local people - this was before radio and TV and all sorts of peddlers plied their trade that way at the time - and some would travel door-to-door. I happen to be old enough to have met a very elderly "snake oil salesman" and magician about 50 years ago that my father had known from his childhood. He gave me an old bottle of his snake oil. It smelled like camphorated kerosene, if I remember correctly, and had a label suggesting that it would cure arthritis, cuts, burns, abrasions and other assorted ailments if applied to the body in the right places.
So, when you see the term "snake oil" here, I think somebody is saying that a product with dubious efficacy has overstated and, possibly, outrageous claims associated with it.
