"From Snake Oil to Medicine tells an almost unbelievable story about America's past. It is a story about a trusting public, about the "snake oil" salesmen who took advantage of their innocence, and about pioneering scientists like Samuel J. Crumbine, M.D., who tried to end practices that, at best, wasted money and, at worst, threatened public health. In one short period documented in From Snake Oil to Medicine, Crumbine confronted just a few practices common in the late-19th and early-20th centuries."--Jacket.