Medicine shows of decades gone by promised their snake oil could cure everything and promoted dangerous drugs like opium to calm children and cocaine for toothache. Asthma cigarettes promised relief from asthma, bad breath, hay fever, bronchial irritation, colds, canker sores, and “all diseases of the throat.” Bayer sold heroin for aches and pains, and amphetamines and tapeworm larvae were sold as weight-loss remedies.
Electricity is the modern snake oil, but electricity and people don’t mix very well, which is why parents tell kids not to stick a butter knife in the light socket.
When I was a kid, growing up on a dairy, we took our city cousins down to the electric fence and have them touch it. It was fun to see them get shocked. My brother and I always tried to get them to pee on the fence but the cousins always got suspicious when they saw the looks on our faces and we never got any takers. The point is we knew electricity hurt, was punishing and even cows avoided it. I wish to apologize to my cousins and anyone who fell for our electricity trick, and bring up a kind of electricity that is supposed to be good for you.
Today something called deep brain stimulation is supposed to cure all kinds of things such as:
Sexual predation
Memory Loss
Tourette’s Syndrome
Gambing
Autism
Parkinson’s Disease
Epilepsy and Movement Disorders
Depression
Anxiety
Now if all this turns out to be today’s snake oil — and IMHO it is — and all else fails, psychiatrists can just just pour the juice to the head the old fashioned way, shock the hell out of the person and roll the dice, after all, this isn’t rocket science. Hey, you may roll a seven, or the guy could – like Ernest Hemingway did after 15 electroshocks – put a shotgun in his mouth and blow the top of his head off. Certainly ended his mental issues.
