Back in the day when the expression started up, TCM was not accepted by the Allopaths partly because it was from the "coolies" and partly because it was competition. You just have to watch an old movie from the early days of film to see how the Chinese were looked upon. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060934/

TCM was not accepted by the government "health" agency in the US till 1997 and then only on a limited basis, despite the fact that Richard Nixon's entourage to China witnessed one of the entourage be treated with acupuncture to relieve post-operative pain from abdominal surgery. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-dWMpuYnwQ

You do not hear an expression referring to Allopathic pharmaceuticals being garbage despite the fact that thousands of them have been banned or ditched for being ripoffs and or dangerous to life and limb, mainly because the Rockefellas have their financial/legal engine behind the drug producers and the AMA is one of the most powerful unions on the face of this planet.

Alan F

The term snake oil most likely derives from:

> In an 1890s advertisement, it is claimed that Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment treats ‘‘rheumatism, neuralgia, sciat- ica, lame back, lumbago, contracted muscles, toothache, sprains, swellings, etc...’’ 

Whether Chinese snake oil was a legitimate medicine is beside the point. Stanley's medicine didn't even have snake oil in it. And the term snake oil as now used refers to bogus treatments of all kinds, regardless of its derivation. This is what it means now, and in its usage casts no aspersions on Chinese traditional medicine. 



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