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The namesake of quackery. Snake oil. (1893) (media.piefed.ca)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/vintageads@sh.itjust.works
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Wikipedia has this nice photo of a historical re-enactor dressed as an 1800's patent medicine broker.

Snake oil re-enactor

Clark Stanley, likely the most (in)famous snake oil peddler,

Clark Stanley

After the passage of the pure food and drug act in 1906 championed by Teddy Roosevelt, it was examined and found to have no medicinal value. He was fined and it was removed from the market. Stanley's product didn't even contain any snake! It was mineral oil and some other extracts.

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[–] 7 points 3 months ago (13 children)

I've been wanting some literal snake oil for a while, like oil made from snakes, I think I'd have to throw that on as a lable

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (12 children)

    I’ve been thinking, how would you actually make that oil? Is it like olive oil, in the sense that you simply put dead snakes in a big press and squeeze out the virgin snake oil? Snakes contain lots of water too, so the goo you get that way is probably pretty far from oil.

    What if you have to use a more modern approach? Use hexane or another organic solvent to separate the oil from the rest. Then just evaporate the hexane, and you’re left with the oil. Maybe you would have to combine both methods.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Like any other animal fat I imagine, render it out.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    That involves heat, which might damage sensitive organic compounds. You know, snake flavonoids and such. Well, if you’re a traditional snake oil salesman, it’s probably fine. If you’re more serious about quality, you might want to preserve the complicated chemistry as much as possible.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    You can render out fat at lower temperatures. Sub boiling temps preserve more flavor.

    But I understand animal fat to be solid at room temp, so I'm not 100% how you turn it into an oil, and honestly not that interested in learning more about snake oil.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    In a culinary context, you care about taste and texture. For example, if your blueberry pie lost all the vitamins in the oven, nobody at the table will notice.

    In a medicinal context, that approach won’t work. The patients can definitely tell if they’re still sick because the medicine isn’t working. That’s why temperature matters.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    In a medical context, snake oil is bullshit anyways.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    It’s literally snake oil. It’s in the name. LOL

    Regardless, I was just entertaining the thought that what if you could take snake oil a bit more seriously. If you did it properly, who knows what kinds of compounds you could find in it. Probably something nasty and dangerous, but still…

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Liquify a whole snake and use the haxane or similar to get as many oily substances as possible like maybe even oil from bone marrow, I wonder if any venoms are oil based

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I only know about protein-based snake venoms. As long as the snakes don’t pull the usual “biology is all about exceptions” card, we’re all good.

    Search hard enough, and you’ll probably find one that is like a fat-soluble vitamin sort of venom. Maybe there also exists a snake that uses arsenic or plutonium as a venom. I mean, biology seems to go with the “why not” option more often than you would imagine.

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