For as long as there have been gullible people , there have been charlatans eager to take advantage of them — and even famously great mind , like the first U.S. chair , have been know to fall for their skunk , mirror , and snake oil . accord toMerriam - Webster , a mountebank is a quack know for making ” showy pretenses to knowledge or power . “ The Oxford English Dictionary lists theoriginal Gallic termas synonymous with “ a mountebanke , [ … ] a pratling quack - salver , a tatler , [ and a ] babler . ” Whether they were hawking miracle medical therapeutic or pictures of specter , thesecon artistsmade history with their cozenage .
1. Elisha Perkins
Elisha Perkins ’s quack miracle cure did n’t involve whodunit tonics or refutable surgeries . To address atrophic arthritis , gout , and other ailments , the doctor prescribed rub two spell of alloy over the afflicted orbit . His patented “ Perkins Metallic Tractors ” consisted of one pointed brass section rod cell and one Fe one . Anyone with money to buy the tractors could administer the intervention to themselves , and it chop-chop swept post - rotatory America — even PresidentGeorge Washingtonboughta gear up . Perkins ’s rods may not have had any real medical value , but they did hold scientific significance . enquiry from 1799 found that subjects were just as probable to account feel “ cure ” by the tractors as they were by other pointed aim that were n’t made of metal — one of theearliest examplesof theplacebo effectin a scientific study .
2. William Mumler
Photography was still a relatively new technology when theSpiritualist movementtook off in the mid-19th one C , and American photographerWilliam Mumlertook vantage of the craze to trade masses glimpses of their miss bed ones from beyond the grave . Customers would give up to $ 10 ( anaverage calendar week ’s earningsfor many skilled workers ) to pose for portraits and receive prints that show wither figures standing next to them . In a time when the rural area was still grieve the staggering loss of the Civil War , business nail .
Mumler did n’t take to understand the supernatural forces at maneuver and never guaranteed that ghostly visitor would crash his shoot . Despite his ignorant act , his work collect the care of skeptics , and in 1869 he was arrested and tried for fraud . tormentor claimed that it was potential to create such images using vernacular photo manipulation techniques like two-fold exposures or superimposed negative . They were unable to come up with one definitive explanation for his magic trick , however , and Mumler was ultimately acquitted . His report was n’t in full maculate by the dirt : At the end of his calling , he photographed formerfirst lady Mary Todd Lincolnwith what he exact to be the spirit of her late husband Abraham .
3. Mary Baker
It did n’t take much to convince the British populace you were alien royal house in 1817 . WhenMary Bakerstumbled onto the streets of Almondsbury wearing alien attire and speaking a made - up language , she quick bewitch the attention of the local townsfolk . Via a Portuguese Panama “ translator , ” she explained she was the lostPrincess Carabooof the ( made - up ) island of Javasu in the East Indies . Her performance was unquestionable enough to fool her host , and before long scholars and artists werecomingto check her show off her dancing , fence , and archery skills . Princess Caraboo gained enough fame to have her story publish in the paper . Her spoof , however , did n’t last long : The owner of anearby lodging houserecognized her as a former guest who entertained her children by speaking in made - up languages . Mary was exposed as a merecobbler ’s daughterand a fraud , but her acting talents did n’t go unvalued — she eventually travel to Philadelphia , where she think about Americans with her fake princess act .
4. Amy Bock
In the other 20th century , Amy Bockbecame the first woman to be relegate as a habitual criminal by New Zealand . Her ego - promulgate kleptomania take her to a lifespan of petty scam , with her most renowned crime imply her male alter - ego Percy Redwood . The reference she constructed was a wizardly sheep farmer with impressivefamilial connections . In 1909 , she goldbrick a woman in her 30 , Agnes Ottaway , into marry Percy with promises of a generous cash gift from her future mother - in - jurisprudence ( who handily could n’t make it to the ceremonial ) . Amy was find oneself out and arrested just four mean solar day later , and ultimately pled shamed to false pretenses and forgery . She was doom to four years of hard labor . Her condemnable tendencies did n’t discontinue there , though : She continued to scam people and fool away them into thinking she was someone she was n’t into herold long time . She made her final court show at years 72 , but none of her later crimes were serious enough to land her back in prison house follow the Percy Redwood incident .
5. John Brinkley
It take a skilled charlatan to make an operation that call for stitching stooge bollock into your scrotum speech sound like a good musical theme . That ’s exactly whatJohn Brinkleydid in the 1920s and ‘ 30 . The quack doctorclaimedthat the testicular secretory organ of young goats could cure impotency when surgically attached straight off to the source of the problem . He tell patient role he would connect the goat testicles to their procreative organisation so the animals ’ glands would continue to officiate , when in reality he was just stick them in loose just beneath the hide . This plainly did nothing to help men ’s troubles , but his convincing salesmanship helped him obviate examination . He used radio toadvertisehis ideas to the passel marketplace , often to the ire of the Federal Radio Commission .
Brinkley ’s scam eventually pass around widely enough to earn the care of the American Medical Association , who spend years trying to expose his fraudulence . Brinkley litigate the AMA ’s Morris Fishbein for libel in 1939 , but this did small to assist his case . In court it came to light that his medical degree had get along from a sheepskin mill , and the AMA ’s word-painting of him proved accurate . He spent the last several eld of his life suffer politics investigations and malpractice lawsuits before conk out of heart bankruptcy in 1942 .
6. Charles Ponzi
In 1920 , Italian American immigrantCharles Ponzidevised a scam grown enough to get a new full term named after him . Because of an external treaty , postal reply coupons purchased in other countries and send to the United States could be exchanged for U.S. postage stamps deserving a nickel . Ponzi realized he could profit off the system by getting mass he know in Europe to send him international reply coupons from countries where the buck was weak , exchange them in the U.S. , and then betray the 5 - penny stamps for their full American value . This technically - legal mental process became a definitive Ponzi scheme when he invite investor to get in on his business , promising their money back plus 50 percentage stake in just three calendar month . Charles Ponzi cheated investors out of $ 20 million by keeping most of the money for himself and using incoming investments to ante up off the old unity . He was n’t the first person to use such shadowy tactics — others , likeSarah Howe , ran like schemes in the mid- to late-19th C — but he will forever be link with the Ponzi schemes that follow after him . The Union government get smart to Ponzi ’s racket and charge him with mail faker in1920 . He attend to three - and - a - half year in prison for the Union charges , plus nine years for the country charges that came later .
7. Clark Stanley
Snake oil was n’t always synonymous with scam intersection . crude made from Chinese weewee serpent had long been used in China as a topical handling for arthritis and other status cause by inflammation . When Chinese rail workers brought the medicine with them to the U.S. in the nineteenth 100 , the name took on a new substance . Clark Stanley , a.k.a . “ The Rattlesnake King , ” is regarded as America ’s first serpent oil salesman . He market his “ Snake Oil Liniment ” as a cure - all for pain , but it did n’t live up to the original Chinese redress . It did n’t even come from real snakes ; Union investigators analyzed his product in 1917 and found it consisted of mineral oil color , fat oil probable from beef , red pepper , and gum terpentine . before long after that , the fraudster “ snake oil salesman ” became a common pilot in medium . Stanley was fined $ 20 for his deception .
8. Norman Baker
Quack Dr. Norman Baker promised his patient miracle cancer discussion that contradicted mainstream aesculapian practices in the 1920s and ’ thirty . His first malignant neoplastic disease facility , theBaker Institute at Muscatine , pull desperate clients and shady practitioners who were otherwise unemployable . In the late 1930s , he fructify his passel on theCrescent Hotelin Arkansas . Under his possession , the historical hotel transformed into a ” clinic “ that promise to bring around cancer patient using groundbreaking ceremony , non - incursive methods . Though his treatments were bogus , he handle to swindle gazillion of dollars from his guests .
In accession to being a fictive Dr. , he was also a dirty hotel proprietor : In 2019 , a landscaper stumbled upon a hoard ofmedicine bottlesthat Baker and his cohort filled with tissue — possibly cancerous tissue paper — and buried on the attribute . The American Medical Association eventually catch lead of his shoddy practices , and in 1940 Baker was convicted of ring armor dupery and sentenced to prison . He was unblock after just three year .
Related Tags
