Morphine, Cocaine, and Lies: How Immigrant Families Survived the Wild West of Patent Medicine

Medical Cure-Alls

Picture this: You're a family who just moved to South Dakota in the 1880s. Your child is sick, and the nearest doctor is miles away. A traveling peddler shows up at your door with fancy bottles of colorful liquids. He says his elixirs can cure anything. Coughs, fevers, even deadly diseases. The friendly stranger seems so sure. Do you believe him?

After the Civil War, the United States had a serious drug problem. Hucksters took advantage of it and of immigrant homesteaders trying to survive on the prairie. This is their story. Why do we call liars "snake oil salesmen?" Did smart immigrant families keep themselves safe by trusting their own traditional remedies over fancy bottles and smooth-talking strangers?

Patent Medicines: "Snake Oil" and Broken Promises

You've probably heard someone called a "snake oil salesman." It means they are a fraud or a con artist with misleading pitches and fake products. But most people don't know this phrase comes from medicine peddlers who roamed the Dakota prairie in the 1870s-1900s. Their dangerous products were useless at best and deadly at worst.

The Real Snake Oil

Here's a surprise: snake oil started out as real medicine! Chinese immigrants who built the American railroads brought a traditional remedy with them to relieve sore muscles and aching joints. What was it? Oil from Chinese water snakes. After spending all day laying railroad tracks, Chinese immigrants rubbed it on their skin to ease the pain.

American workers noticed how well it worked and wanted to use it themselves. American businessmen saw a chance to make money, but there was one big problem. Chinese water snakes didn't live in America.

So what did the businessmen do? They made fake "snake oil" from rattlesnakes, which didn't work nearly as well as the real thing. Even worse, some bottles didn't contain any snake oil at all! Completely useless.

Scientists later discovered why the fake versions didn't work. Chinese water snake oil has almost three times more omega-3 fatty acids than rattlesnake oil. Omega-3 fatty acids are the ingredient that reduces pain and swelling.

Clark Stanley: The Rattlesnake King

The most famous snake oil salesman was Clark Stanley, who called himself "The Rattlesnake King." At the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, Stanley put on quite a show by pulling a live rattlesnake out of a bag in front of a crowd, slicing it open, throwing it in boiling water, and skimming off the fat that rose to the top. He claimed this was his miracle snake oil, capable of curing everything from joint pain to toothaches to sore throats.

Stanley said he learned about snake oil from the Hopi tribe. He never mentioned the Chinese railroad workers who actually brought snake oil to America. He was such a good showman that he even wrote a book about his so-called adventures as a cowboy and medicine man!

But in 1916, after the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act, government officials tested Stanley's Snake Oil Liniment and found it contained mineral oil, beef fat, red pepper, and turpentine. Not a single drop of snake oil! Stanley was fined $20 (about $400 in today's money) and disappeared. But the damage was done—hundreds of people had bought his fake medicine, and "snake oil salesman" became another name for a con artist.

The Dangers Hidden in Pretty Bottles

Patent medicines weren't just frauds. They were often dangerous. These cure-alls, sold by traveling peddlers and through mail-order catalogs, often contained:

• Alcohol (sometimes 40% or more—more potent than whiskey!)

• Opium or morphine (highly addictive painkillers)

• Cocaine (yes, the same drug that's illegal today)

Here's the scariest part: Until 1906, companies didn't have to say what was in their medicines. A mom might buy "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup" to calm her crying baby. She had no idea it contained morphine. A lot of morphine. One teaspoon had enough to kill the average child. Experts think thousands of babies died from it. By the time mothers realized their babies were addicted, it was too late. In 1911, the American Medical Association called it a "baby killer."

Civil War Soldiers and the "Soldier's Disease"

The Civil War, which ended in 1865 (just 10 years before our time period), created America's first major drug addiction crisis. The Union Army alone gave out nearly 10 million opium pills to soldiers, plus 2.8 million ounces of opium powders and liquids. These were used to treat pain from terrible wounds and diseases.

Many soldiers came home addicted. People called morphine addiction "the soldier's disease," "opium slavery," and "morphine mania". These were men dealing with what we now call PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Terrible nightmares, jumpiness, and emotional pain from the horrors they'd seen in battle. Opium and morphine made them feel better for a while, but they couldn't stop taking the drugs without getting violently sick.

Doctors didn't understand addiction back then and actually thought morphine was safe. By the end of the 1870s and into the 1890s, virtually every American doctor had a hypodermic syringe, which was the main driver of the significant increase in opiate addiction. By 1895, about 1 in every 200 Americans was addicted to opiates.

Most addicts were actually middle-class or wealthy white women. Doctors gave them morphine for "women's issues": menstrual cramps, morning sickness, or "nervous disorders." By the late 1800s, 60 percent of opium addicts were women. These women had no idea they were getting addicted to a dangerous drug.

Why Immigrant Families Were Careful

So when a traveling peddler showed up at an immigrant homestead with bottles promising miracle cures, smarter families were suspicious. Perhaps they'd heard stories about neighbors who got addicted. Or they'd heard gossip about children who died from "soothing syrups." Ultimately, they knew that if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was.

The immigrants' old-country remedies might not cure everything, but at least they knew what was in them. A tea made from herbs you grew yourself was a lot safer than a mysterious liquid from a stranger's bottle. Even if the bottle had a fancy label and big promises.

On the positive side, these patent medicines did help pass the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, as mentioned before. The act required medicines to list dangerous ingredients like opium, cocaine, morphine, alcohol, heroin, and cannabis on their labels. But by then, thousands of people, including some immigrants on the Dakota prairie, had already gotten addicted or poisoned by these "miracle cures."

This is why clever immigrant settlers kept using their purple coneflower root for toothaches, wild bergamot tea for colds, and prairie coneflower for fevers. They didn't understand germs or science like we do today. But they understood common sense. Don't put mystery stuff in your body just because a smooth-talking stranger says it will cure you.

Author's Note: This research is for a work of fiction about immigrants who settled in southeastern South Dakota between 1875 and 1900. The historical facts about patent medicines, addiction, and the hucksters who sold them are real and documented. How these events might have affected immigrant homesteaders on the prairie is drawn from the author's historical research and creative interpretation.

Sources

• All That's Interesting. "The Fraudulent History Of Snake Oil And The 'Rattlesnake King' Who Popularized The Term." March 24, 2025.

• NPR Code Switch. "A History Of 'Snake Oil Salesmen.'" August 26, 2013.

• Smithsonian Magazine. "How Snake Oil Became a Symbol of Fraud and Deception." October 21, 2024.

• National Museum of American History. "Clark Stanley's Snake Oil Liniment." Smithsonian Institution.

• Virginia Museum of History & Culture. "Opiate Addiction in the Civil War's Aftermath."

• Smithsonian Magazine. "Inside the Story of America's 19th-Century Opiate Addiction." December 29, 2017.

• History.com. "How Civil War Medicine Led to America's First Opioid Crisis." May 27, 2025.

• Wikipedia. "Pure Food and Drug Act."

• Britannica. "Pure Food and Drug Act."

• Wikipedia. "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup." November 1, 2024.

• Pharmacy Times. "Pharmacy's Past: The Soothing Syrup Known for Causing Death in Thousands of Babies." March 5, 2021.

• Museum of Healthcare. "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup: The Baby Killer." January 26, 2021.