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The rise and fall of snake oil

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/rise-and-fall-snake-oil
14•samizdis•4d ago

Comments

Bender•4d ago
Over the course of the 19th century snake oil transformed from folk remedy, to industrial medicine, to notorious fake.

And yet they can be a great source for Omega-3 fatty acids, most notably the Chinese water snake up to 20% EPA, the Erabu Sea Snake high in DHA. Rattlesnakes are much lower, around 5% to 6% Omega-3's better than nothing. I will always personally prefer Krill Oil for the high absorption.

There will always be scammers and grifters but I would prefer to not let them ruin the original product they are trying to exploit.

delichon•58m ago
Given that this timeline maximizes irony we will soon find that the demonization of rendered gopher snake fat was an early victory of big medicine, protecting doctors from the competition of a genuine all purpose elixir of health.
0xWTF•26m ago
It was not only the FDA that stopped snake oil. A lot of it was also stopped by state licensure and medical school accreditation (see the Flexner Report), all of which happened in roughly the same era.

What I take from this is that AI code, biology, etc, will not announce itself. We will have to announce the human-produced content. Introductions are about to be ritualistic again. Queue humorous (but not really all that valid) counterpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoe24aSvLtw

pedalpete•23m ago
I think they will soon be re-writing this article with the addition of "and rise again".

I work in neurotech/sleeptech and one of the biggest challenges I see in our industry is, if not pure snake-oil, the over-hype of "backed by research".

People have accused us of being snake-oil as well, and I get why they might think that if you haven't read or don't understand the science.

I've seen products that claim to be Vagus Nerve stimulators that are worn on the wrist, nowhere near the vagus nerve. Products that claim to mimic the "magnetic frequency of hormones".

We've also got the current "It's got electrolytes" craze which is kinda crazy that we've truly replicated idiocracy.

For those curious, I'm the co-founder of affectablesleep.com

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The rise and fall of snake oil

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/rise-and-fall-snake-oil
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