Conservation biologist Kit Prendergast looks at the booming trade in
reptile remedies, and the threat of traditional medicine and snake-oil
‘cures’ to reptile conservation.
“You know what they call alternative medicine that
works? Medicine.” ~ Tim Minchin.
W
e live in an age where
entire diseases have been
virtually eliminated by
modern medicine, and a vast number
of others can be effectively treated or
prevented. Yet the use of animals in
traditional folk medicine persists,
and there is a lucrative trade in
selling curatives derived from
reptiles to a consumer base that turns
to ‘natural’ or ‘traditional’ products
and beliefs. This entails potential
risk of harm to consumers, and grave
consequences for the reptile species
involved.
Some purveyors of preparations
including reptile parts legitimately
believe their concoctions work; for
example, many people swear by the
benefits of Tokay Gecko for curing
all kinds of maladies ranging from
erectile dysfunction to cancer.
Schools of Traditional Chinese
Medicine teach students to perpetu-
ate these so-called remedies under
the veneer of academic authority,
while internationally-published TCM
textbooks advocate the use of animal
parts for ‘medicinal’ purposes
(including various endangered
species like tigers). Maciocia, in The
Practice of Chinese Medicine 2 nd
edition (1994) uses various animal
components, including parts of
reptiles and the testicles and penis of
dog, whereas Xie and Liao in
Traditional Chinese Internal
Medicine (1993) recommend herbal
recipes that include tortoise-plastron
glue. As with all TCM texts, they
contain no evidence of the efficacy
of the supposed remedies, or of the
physiological basis upon which the
animal parts can deliver a curative
effect. Instead, they describe the
benefits of the components in terms
of TCM symptomatology
(metaphysical parables about
balancing Yin and Yang, Five
Element Theory, etc.).
Then there are those that are fully
aware that preparations from the skin
of Tokay Gecko are about as
effective in curing period pain, lack
of libido or liver disease (insert
whatever malady you have) as
grinding up your own toenails and
drinking them – snake oil salesmen.
The name has now been incorporated
into our lexicon to mean ‘someone
who knowingly sells fraudulent
goods or who is himself or herself a
fraud, quack, charlatan, and the
like’ (Wikipedia), and the Oxford
English Dictionary defines snake oil
as ‘a quack remedy or panacea’.
Although throughout history sly
peddlers have made a profit from
selling ineffective remedies with
empty promises to cure all sorts of
ills, the term snake oil salesman
originates with Clark Stanley, the
self-proclaimed ‘Rattlesnake King’.
Snake oil has been used for centuries
by the Chinese. It was introduced to
the Western world in the 1860s when
thousands of Chinese
people arrived in the US as
indentured labourers to
work on the Transcontinen-
tal Railroad, which
required over 3,000km of
track to be laid, linking
Iowa to San Francisco. The
Chinese workers brought
with them snake oil -
specifically oil cruelly
extracted from the Chinese
Water Snake (Enhydris
chinensis) - which they
used as a salve to ease their
muscles, aching from the
back-breaking work. This
exotic ‘home remedy’ was
shared with some of the
Western workers.
Right: Tokay Geckos
bottled with liquor in
Vietnam.
Image by Dekcos.
Charlatans saw a market, and began
selling snake oil, often on the back
pages of newspapers, as a tonic to
cure not only muscular pain, but also
arthritis, chronic pain, headaches,
kidney problems and ‘female
complaints’. Instead of Chinese
Water Snakes, the American
peddlers of snake oil instead sought
local species. Clark Stanley - a
former cowboy - popularised snake
oil using rattlesnakes, and claimed
he had learned about the healing
power of snake oil from Hopi
medicine men. He showcased his
new cure-all at the 1893 World’s
Exposition by taking a live snake
and slicing it open in front of a
crowd of onlookers. After plunging
the eviscerated snake into boiling
water, he skimmed the fat off the
top, bottled it on the spot and sold it
as ‘Stanley’s Snake Oil’. However,
not only did Stanley’s liniment fail
to deliver the miracle cures touted;
upon seizing a shipment, federal
investigators found it to be