As the American frontier expanded there were many communities that had no real health care. In these rural areas folk remedies, most of limited effect, were the only treatments. Indian medicine men and women had more knowledge of native plants than the few and distant physicians and apothecaries, who in any case were more inclined to bloodletting with leeches, but Indians were ignored as savages.
There were many dangers in frontier life--violence, accidents, a lack of hygiene and sanitation and the diseases that followed. As a result, life was typically nasty, brutal and short, as well as tedious and difficult. Eager, even desperate for medical assistance--and entertainment- settlers were a receptive audience for traveling medicine shows.
An entrepreneur with a flair for marketing would travel from town to town in a horse-drawn wagon or two, hauling cases of “patent medicine” and a small group of entertainers. The doctor-cum-maestro would call out to the gathering crowd, announcing a new cure for constipation, rheumatism, syphilis, and other often serious ailments. He would also promise them eye-popping entertainment --song and dance, trick-shot artists, maybe a flea circus. In between acts he would sell his feel-good bottles which typically contained alcohol, cocaine, and/or opiate derivatives, but nothing with curative properties.
But yes, sir! You could feel something happening when you drank this elixir--it wasn’t sugar water! It had an impressive effect. As the crowd became more delighted with the show and more affected by the elixir they would scrape together some more money for more bottles or a case. At the end of the evening the good doctor and company would toast the crowd’s future good health and ride away.
I imagine that on a maiden voyage the doc and his crew would assume that these shows had to be one-time only. They wouldn’t plan to return to a town where they had scammed the residents!
But mouths must be fed and with travel costs and a limited number of settlements even in a large area, a return trip at some point would become necessary. And some of the hustlers were not unfamiliar with the placebo effect, or the variation in which those who have been flim-flammed prefer not to come to this painful realization.
In fact, medicine shows seldom met any hostile crowds on their visits. Showmanship and salesmanship go a long way to obscure the fact that there is nothing valid in the product offering. A song and a dance, a pretty girl, and a special sale price on the new and improved elixir can smooth the waters. This was especially true for a savvy maestro who praised the remarkable fortitude of the settlers, their progress over the course of a year, the way they were so badly treated by bankers and East Coast railroad elites, and their courage in the face of the constant danger posed by hostile savages.
That’s all it took. More applause, more bottles sold, maybe enough for a second wagon or a third.
Over the years, medical science did improve. Frontier nurses and physicians could demonstrate success with certain illnesses, and improved transportation made it easier for patients and providers to come together. Schoolteachers could question more successfully the charlatans and con artists of the medicine shows. And just as importantly new forms of entertainment became available. But all of this took lots of time and patient, persistent effort on the part of the educated and informed, who must have learned to tolerate a great deal of frustration.
The health care professionals and teachers may have thought they had finally tamed the frontier when medicine shows lost their appeal and patent medicine lost credibility. They hadn’t. This is a project that must be repeated with each generation.
The medicine show was supplanted by other types of hucksters--sociopaths who aimed for political power rather than nickels and dimes. in time mass media would entertain millions simultaneously and offer a tremendous opportunity to deceive and hypnotize. New “enemies of the people” would take on subsequent challenges--highlighting racism, protesting the nationalism and jingoism that lead to war and destruction, and warning of the ongoing poisoning of the planet.
We have learned there is no end of history, no second coming, no final conflict. There is only putting our shoulders to the wheel to prevent disaster and to make the little progress that will have to be defended in the future. No reason to despair, or to be surprised. Just a reason to organize, mobilize, get to work.