Thomas Rowlandson:
'The Quack Doctor's Prayer!!'
(1801)

"…a society founded on equality and hopefulness rather than Patent Medicine Cynicism"

If anything typifies our age, patent medicine does. Those who thought the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act put an end to Snake Oil sales have a few more thoughts coming, for those bygone times never saw the likes of our present Food and Drug Administration, which, in keeping with the theme of our incumbent’s administration that steadfastly refuses to administer anything, has slashed regulation, too, it having always been just another form of administration and therefore verboten. Since we no longer travel much by horse, a thoroughly modern non-administration wouldn’t summon apocalyptic equestrians to harken any end, for pandemics and contagion are better encouraged by merely nominating inept administrators. In his first failed non-administration, perhaps our incumbent’s proudest moments were spent encouraging vaccine and mask deniers, many of whom gladly paid for their vanity with their lives, and those of their grandparents. Hundreds of thousands unnecessarily perished thanks to our incumbent’s administrative ineptness. This served as perhaps his primary qualification for his re-election to a second term. The deceased, I guess, make the most satisfied customers, or so the Snake Oil salespersons of old insisted, and our incumbent seems to be proving it again.

My social media feed overfloweth with questionable health and “wellness” advice, none of it promoted by actual “doctors,” who seem to be held in sincere disrespect by a significant proportion of the population, and not just by the very vocal MAGA minority. Even the leftiest of the leftists seems to agree that mainstream medicine has become moribund, compromised, and untrustworthy, killing us with its progress. Grandmother’s remedies seem more fashionable these days. Whole societies have sprung up out of the political firmament to promote everything from bull pee to beetroot powders as cures for the side effects of the actual prescriptions real doctors routinely prescribe. We are taught to hold our doctors in at least mild contempt, as if they were necessarily corrupt because they hold some medical certifications. We are encouraged to hold anyone touting actual credentials in ever-deepening suspicion, and to consider the upstart Snake Oil Salespersons as civilization’s saviors, especially the political snake oil peddlers.

Much of the vast Right Wing Media Empire was financed by supplement manufacturers. This information alone should probably convince everyone to leave that crap alone. Still, this non-prescription “medicine” market might be the most profitable in the world now, though it’s an order of magnitude smaller than the formal regulated one. Supplements are largely unregulated and don’t have to pass lengthy, expensive clinical trials or protect themselves against the liabilities those trials might imply. They curiously do not require proof that they work to garner acceptance. The “industry” has grown through “influence,” which, if actual pharmaceutical companies engaged in it, would be called bribes. The pharmaceutical companies are playing catch-up, advertising as if they were promoting consumer products rather than medicines. However, they’re still required to state typical side effects in that fast-talking voice that makes them indistinguishable from snake-oil salespeople.

Unsurprisingly, politicians have increasingly been taking their cues from the quacks. Trickle-down Economics seems indistinguishable from patent medicines, since its tenets have never once been observed in this world. Yet it has become a baseline standard belief in the MAGA world, an unquestioned (if unprincipled) principle of conservative ideology. Politics has been practiced as ideology since nearly the beginning of time, but never before so profitably. The much-touted Tea Party Movement was financed by patent medicine and “natural” supplements. Our incumbent, who wouldn’t be caught dead ever consuming anything touted as actually being good for him, has benefited enormously from the upstart patent medicine industrial complex. We might reasonably call this era one where Patent Politics came to dominate the political marketplace for a spell, and we became entranced. Both the medicines that don’t need proof of efficacy and the PatentPolitics its success purchased are zombies, walking dead, animated with borrowed time. Like before, near the end of the Gilded Age, the accumulated pestilences will very likely eventually convince The People that a little regulation might be preferable to mass annihilation, but that jury’s still out.

Today is the midterm election, and we’ve yet to see whether we experience an historical reframing of governance. However today’s election turns out, our incumbent will still be our incumbent, though We, The People, might find more traction when trying to moderate a few of his more radical intentions. If the Blue Wave washes over our shores, that victory arch won’t desecrate the Southern end of the Arlington Bridge. We might gain a few more reasonable judges, maybe even a couple of fresh Supreme Court Justices, for a change. Supplements are unlikely to become significantly less popular as a result of this election. We might never again find reason to trust our scientists and medicines as we once did, though AI has been expanding the horizons of successful medicines at ever-increasing rates. We have every reason to be hopeful for a future where the cynicism of PatentPolitics sees a definite downturn, for such cynicism might just produce its own Comeuppance, especially in a society founded on equality and hopefulness rather than Patent Medicine Cynicism.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz