"Aye want dees filled wit' man oil."
With this the speaker, a rawboned, stolid looking Swede, handed a dirty, two ounce vial across the counter of a Division street [Chicago, Ill.] drug store to the clerk. Without saying a word or moving a muscle to indicate astonishment at this singular request the clerk took the vial and disappeared behind the prescription case. In a moment he reappeared, and, handing the vial back, remarked in an indifferent tone:
"Ninety cents."- "Many odd remedies", från Chicago Tribune återgiven i Lincoln County Reader 14 maj 1896
Ormolja är ju vida känd än idag, om inte varan i sig (som många gånger verkligen var äkta ormolja, något som en del har tvivlat på) så åtminstone själva uttrycket, som symbol för kvack och lurendrejeri. Mindre känt är att en mängd andra oljor förekom, och det inte bara i USA. På ömse sidor Atlanten hände det att kunder frågade efter oljor på orm, skunk, hund, daggmask eller rentav människa (flera av varorna hade inte väckt uppmärksamhet några sekler tidigare). Och då sålde den tjänstvilliga personalen passande vanliga oljor och fetter, och det helt utan dåligt samvete eftersom de var fullt medvetna om att originalen var lika värdelösa som kopiorna.
Being asked to tell something about the traffic in the fat of human beings the clerk grinned.
"I gave the fellow two ounces of simple cerate and charged a fancy price to impress him with the genuineness of the 'man fat,'" said he. "I see no harm in the deception. The fellow has unbounded faith in the virtues of man oil, and he wouldn't be happy until he believed he had some. If I didn't sell him some, he would find a druggist who would. The simple cerate will do him just as good as man oil. We often have calls for remedies as absurd as this. We always fill them — out of the simple cerate bottle if it be an oil, or some other harmless drug if it be something else".
Faktoider: Konsten att sälja ormolja; Snake oil in the 1880s
Inom vetenskapen används ju ibland fett från människor t ex i en artikel om pigmentproduktion för Stafylokocker:
SvaraRadera"Preparation of human fat:
Minced perinephric fat, obtained from a number of cadavers at necropsy, was extracted with ether at 4' C. for 24 hr. The ethereal layer was removed and evaporated to dryness at 4OoC. The fatty residue, referred to as human fat, was butter-yellow in colour, and fluid at room temperature."
WILLIS AT, TURNER GC. Staphylococcal lipolysis and pigmentation. J Pathol
Bacteriol. 1962 Oct;84:337-47. PubMed PMID: 14000962.