Unproven treatments have been with us for centuries. Many of us will remember the image of the "snake-oil" salesmen who marketed "cure-all" medications from their wagons as they moved through the countryside. They were well portrayed by Frank Morgan in the opening scenes of the movie The Wizard of Oz.
In our century, such practitioners have assumed a much more pseudo-scientific veneer, and the sales pitch they deliver is always sprinkled with scientific-sounding jargon that to the informed individual makes no sense, but that may sound properly scientific to people unfamiliar with the terminology.
Through the past two centuries, unorthodox practitioners tended to use the scientific terminology of the era. Accordingly, in the early nineteenth century, the words "magnetism" and "magnetic" often were adopted. Similarly, many nineteenth- and twentieth-century nostrums focused attention on words like "electric" and "electrical".
During the 1920s, in the exciting early days of the electronic age of radio, telephone and other miracles produced by energy, "energy" cancer cures appeared. "Cosmic energy treatment" and "light therapy" became the rage.
Koch's glyoxilide (distilled water) cure of the 1940s was followed in the 1950s by the Hoxsey Treatment in pill and extract form. Injectable krebiozen—which turned out to be essentially mineral oil—was popular in the 1960s and was followed in the 1970s by Laetrile, a substance prepared from apricot pits and often referred to as
