Medicine show

Medicine shows were traveling horse and wagon teams which peddled "miracle cure" medications and other products between various entertainment acts. They developed from European mountebank shows and were common in the 19th century United States, especially in the Old West era (though they continued up to World War II).^[1] They are most commonly associated with "miracle elixirs" (sometimes referred to as snake oil), which, it was claimed, had the ability to cure any disease, smooth wrinkles, remove stains, prolong life or cure any number of common ailments. Most shows has their own patent medicine (these medicines were for the most part unpatented but took the name to sound official). Entertainment often included a freak show, a flea circus, musical acts, magic tricks, jokes, or storytelling. Each show was run by a man posing as a doctor who drew the crowd with a monologue. The entertainers, such as acrobats, musclemen, magicians, dancers, ventriloquists, exotic performers, and trick shots, kept the crowd around until the salesman sold his medicine.

History

Origins

While showmen pitching miraculous cures have been around since classical times,^[2] the advent of mixed performance and medicine sales in western culture originated during the Dark Ages of Europe after circuses and theatres were banned and performers had only the marketplace or patrons for support.^[2]. Mountebanks, or fake doctors, traveled through small towns and large cities, selling miraculous elixirs by offering small street shows and miraculous cures.^[1]

Early America

The American medicine show evolved from European mountebanks, or quack doctors, who attracted city audiences with performing zanni and then performed rudimentary dentistry or sold elixirs. Such traveling performer salesmen appeared in the American colonies before 1772, as colonies legislated against them in that year. Because of America’s lack of large urban centers, quack doctors relied heavily on traveling shows and eventually developed full-fledged medicine shows.

19th century

Medicine shows combined various forms of popular entertainment with sales pitches from a fake doctor selling an astounding cure-all medicine or device. Pitchmen made grandiose claims about their product’s efficacy, sometimes planting testimonials in the audience. The speaker would create a need or fear and then offer his unique medicine as the only cure. Alternating entertainment and sales pitches wore down audience resistance until the crowd was saturated with the product. The show would continue to run as many days as possible and then move on to the next target city. A show could stay in a town between one night and six weeks, depending on how the troupe behaved itself. Circuits covered the entire United States, though shows usually focused on the Midwest and south, as pitchmen believed the rural inhabitants to be gullible. Shows played either outdoors from a wagon, platform or tent, or indoors in a theatre or opera hall. Admission was usually free or nominal. By the end of the eighteen hundreds, the patent medicine industry was an $80 million dollar business. The nineteenth century offered a unique time for the development of traveling mountebanks into more polished medicine shows. The patent medicine industry exploded, affording enterprising drifters a specific product to sell. By 1858, at least 1,500 patent medicines were recorded.^[2] The medicine that was being sold was usually not real medicine but rather just a small concoction involving drugs like cocaine, opium, and alcohol. Because most medicines were laced with drugs, the consumers would continue purchasing the medicine to feed their addiction. The advertising industry also expanded in the 1800s, offering medicine show companies posters, fliers, handbills, and other merchandising to promote their products.^[1] Advertising largely took the form of memorable jingles and songs, sensational testimonials, and scare techniques. Companies could spend up to $100,000 per year on advertising. Such large sums made advertising an extremely lucrative business, so magazines like Saturday Evening Post and Woman’s Home Companion were started specifically to sell advertising. Furthermore, medicine shows brought entertainment to rural communities that might not have any other shows for years at a time. Whatever the quality of the medical advice, spectators got their money’s worth from the extravagant free entertainment.

Hamlin's Wizard Oil and Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company

The two largest, most successful American medicine shows were Hamlin’s Wizard Oil Company, founded in Chicago by John and Lysander Hamlin, and the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company, founded in 1881 by Charles Bigelow and John Healey. Hamlin’s Wizard Oil Company troupes travelled in specially designed wagons with built in organs and space for their musical performers. Their draw was clean, moral, musical entertainment for the whole family. Part of their advertising included songsters, or small booklets of song lyrics and Wizard Oil advertizing.^[1] The Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company created traveling shows based around sham Indian presentational ceremonies such as war dances and marriages. “Representatives” of the Kickapoo tribe translated for the Indians and sold Sagwa, the most famous patent medicine. The company also blended in other forms of entertainment such as vaudeville shows, trained dog shows, dances, and acrobatics.

20th century

As reliable commercial pharmaceuticals became produced on an industrial level in the early 20th century, the reputation of and market for home remedies began to dwindle, and medicine shows came to rely ever more on their entertainment value. But as America's population became less rural and more urbanized, the availability of other forms of entertainment, such as motion pictures and Vaudeville, and later radio, led to the gradual disappearance of the traveling medicine show. By the 1930s, relatively few such companies continued to tour throughout the United States. Even fewer shows endured the economic and social upheaval of the Great Depression and World War II. Those that survived into the 1950s found themselves competing against television, and came to be regarded as relics of an earlier, more innocent era. This novelty, far more than the availability of the remedies peddled, provided the chief support for the last of the traveling medicine shows.

The Hadacol Caravan

One of the most famous of the 20th century traveling shows was the Hadacol Caravan, sponsored by Louisiana State Senator Dudley J. LeBlanc and his LeBlanc Corporation, makers of the dubious patent medicine/vitamin tonic "Hadacol", known for both its alleged curative powers and its high alcohol content. The stage show, which ran throughout the Deep South in the 1940s with great publicity, featured a number of notable music acts and Hollywood celebrities, and was used to promote Hadacol (which was sold heavily during intermission and after the show). Admission to the show was paid in boxtops of the vitamin tonic, sold in stores throughout the southern United States. The Caravan came to a sudden halt in 1951, when the Hadacol enterprise fell apart in a financial scandal.

Chief Thundercloud and Peg Leg Sam

One of the last great medicine shows had its swan song in the summer of 1972, when the two-man show of Chief Thundercloud (pitchman Leo Kahdot, a Potawatomi from Oklahoma)^[3] and Peg Leg Sam (harmonicist/singer/comedian Arthur Jackson) played at a carnival in Pittsboro, NC. It was the last show of the year for them; Kahdot/Thundercloud died that winter.^[4]

'Doc' Scott’s Last Real Old Time Medicine Show

Perhaps the last of the medicine shows was run by Tommy Scott, who put on as many as three hundred shows per year until about 1990. As a teenager in the 1930s, Scott joined the 'Doc' Chambers Medicine Show, established by M.F. Chambers in the late 19th Century. Scott sang, played guitar, and performed ventriloquism and blackface acts, and pitched Chambers' Herb-O-Lac herbal laxative. When Chambers retired in the late 1930s, Scott took charge of the show, performing for many years with his wife, Mary, and sidekick, Gaines Blevins, known as "Old Bleb." Scott's daughter, Sandra, performed in the show as a singer, bass player, and acrobat, and beginning in the 1960s saw to the business end of the show. Herb-O-Lac eventually gave way to a mentholated skin liniment, which Scott dubbed Snake Oil. For decades, the show toured arenas and senior centers as 'Doc' Scott's Last Real Old Time Medicine Show. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the show also solicited donations for charitable organizations such as the Lions Club and Optimist Club.^[5]

Use in popular culture

In the 1933 Krazy Kat cartoon The Medicine Show, Krazy runs a medicine show where he performs some acts and sells bottled liquids which have a variety of uses.

In the 1949 The Inspector General film, character played by Danny Kaye works for a medicine show, selling "Yakov's Golden Elixir".

Several modern musical acts have named themselves after this old-time phenomenon, including Old Crow Medicine Show, Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band, Blues, funk rock band Moondog Medicine Show, Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show, and MV & EE Medicine Show. It also lent its name to The Dream Syndicate's album Medicine Show, to Big Audio Dynamite's song "Medicine Show," and The Band's "W.S. Walcott Medicine Show". Throughout 2010 and 2011, the hip hop artist Madlib released a 12-part mix series with the title "Madlib Medicine Show."

Science fiction author Orson Scott Card titled his online sci-fi journal "The Intergalactic Medicine Show".

British comedy trio The Goodies performed a scene as part of "The Goodies Traveling Medicine Show" in an episode of their series entitled Hospital For Hire. The scene included a plant from the audience (Tim) being pulled from the audience to 'prove' that the mystery elixir cured all ailments.

In Rockstar's video game Red Dead Redemption, one of the main characters plays the role of an early 20th-century hustler peddling what John Marston refers to as snake oil.

Your Song, by Elton John, also mentions a man who makes "potions in a traveling show".

On the album Everything You Know Is Wrong by the comedy troupe The Firesign Theatre, the recording's narrator plays a wire recording of a medicine show featuring a "Dr. Firesign" promoting "Chief Dancing Knockout's Pyramid Pushover Paste" and "Don Bruhaha's Inca Hell-Oil Tonic".

The song "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves" performed by Cher is about a girl who was "born in the wagon of a traveling show". Her father would sell bottles of snake oil medicine called "Doctor Good".

The music video for the Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney song "Say, Say, Say" had Paul, his wife Linda and Michael performing a traditional medicine show.

In The Simpsons episode, "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy," Homer and Grampa Simpson travel across country, giving medicine shows for their aphrodisiac, "Simpson and Son's Tonic."

Magician "Pop" Haydn models his magic shows after old-time medicine shows, complete with the selling of several products such as "Pop Haydn's Miracle Oil", which he claims to have received from "Placebo Indians."

The 1977 live-action/animated musical film Pete's Dragon features a medicine showman called Dr Terminus, and local townspeople being first sceptical, then duped, by his claimed healing abilities.

References

Bibliography

Agnew, Jeremy. Entertainment in the Old West: Theater, Music, Circuses, Medicine Shows, Prizefighting and Other Popular Amusements. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2011. Print.

Anderson, Ann. Snake Oil, Hustlers and Hambones: The American Medicine Show. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2000. Print.

McNamara, Brooks. Step Right up. 1st ed. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1976. Print.