Hinn was visibly angry because of the huge amount of money he had invested in the crusade. “Four million dollars down the drain,” he is said to have shouted on the final day of the event. The vice president of Benny Hinn Ministries, Jon Wilson, gave a breakdown of the money. He said $3 million was spent on hotel accommodations and technical infrastructure, while $1 million more was used up by members of the local organizing committee.

But the Benny Hinn Healing Crusade generated a lot of interest and debate in the local media. A Nigerian pastor, writing in The Guardian, one of the national dailies, urged the Pentecostal leaders to “bury their heads in shame,” given the “prevailing rot” in their churches. And as a face-saving measure, the Pentecostal Federation of Nigeria (PFN)-the umbrella group of most Pentecostal churches in Nigeria-had to expel Bishop Dr. Joseph Olanrewaju Obembe, the president of the PFN chapter in Lagos, General Overseer of the El-Shaddai Bible Church, and a coordinator of the Benny Hinn Healing Crusade, and other pastors who served on the local committee.

With the growing decline in religious belief in America and the entire Western world, evangelists are looking to Africa for converts, followers, and disciples. Many Pentecostal churches in Africa receive millions of dollars in aid from their American counterparts to “bring Africans to Christ.” Luis Bush, a cousin of president George W. Bush and one of the leading evangelists in the U.S., supports missionary work in more that thirty African countries. Other American evangelists, such as Benny Hinn, Todd Bentley, and Oral Roberts, as well as the German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, sponsor miracle crusades across the continent.

Pentecostalism has therefore become a thriving business in Africa. In fact, it has become the shortest route to wealth and affluence for the continent’s teeming population of unemployed youths. Local pastors employ all sorts of tricks and techniques to extort money from gullible folks (as well as foreign friends). They use this money to build magnificent churches, erect costly dwellings, buy luxurious cars and aircraft, and live ostentatiously, while their church members languish in poverty, misery, and squalor.

In most cases, pastors tell the faithful to give money to God so that God will bless them in return. They tell the people of the divine favors that come to those who pay their tithes and make offerings regularly. Or they use the biblical injunction that says, “givers never lack"-though in Africa, they often do-to squeeze money out of the people. In Nigeria, there have been instances where people have even stolen money to give to their pastors and churches. In March 2003, a cashier in a hotel in Abuja was arrested for allegedly stealing nearly forty million naira (about $40,000) from his employer. The man later confessed to the police that he gave the money to his church, Christ Embassy. And in another case of theft for God, a bank clerk stole forty million naira from his employer and gave ten million to his church as seed money, in the belief that the seed would germinate and yield several times that amount in return, as promised by his pastor. The man, according to the BBC’s Focus on Africa magazine, got appointed to the office of assistant pastor. But before his seed could germinate, the crime was detected and he was arrested.

Miracles in Africa

Africans are suckers for magic, miracles, and paranormal claims. Generally, among Africans, there is a deep-seated belief in supernatural forces that intervene and alter human destinies for good or ill. These spiritual forces are believed to work in magical and miraculous ways, through signs and wonders that confound the human mind. And the evangelical churches are capitalizing on this superstitious element in African thought and culture to peddle and propagate their paranormal services. They promise divine healing and instant solutions for problems and diseases.

Pentecostal pastors claim they have the power to make the deaf hear, the blind see, the lame walk, and the infertile give birth. Recently, Gilbert Deya, a self-proclaimed archbishop from Kenya, got himself into trouble: he said he could make infertile black couples give birth to miracle babies. But police investigations revealed child theft and baby trafficking. (See my article “The Kenya Miracle Babies Scandal,” in the September 2005 Skeptical Briefs.) Some years ago, a Nigerian pastor, Temitope Joshua, of the Synagogue of All Nations, announced to the world that he could cure HIV/AIDS.

In 2001, German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke was reported to have raised a person from the dead. There have been a lot of such indiscriminate claims of miracles and divine healing by Nigeria’s televangelists and end-time preachers-Chris Oyakhilome, Enoch Adeboye, David Oyedepo, Helen Ukpabio, Matthew Ashimolowo, et al. These faith healers use the money from miracle seekers to put up billboards and sponsor radio and television programs advertising their miracles. Last year, the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission had to ban the broadcast of miracles on national television.

Faith healing is the greatest threat to scientific medicine and health-care delivery in Africa. Miracles have no basis in science, reason, or common sense. All claims of divine cures and healing cannot be reconciled with the dire health situation in Africa. Africa has the highest infant-mortality rate in the world. And millions there are still dying of preventable diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. According to the United Nations, 6,000 African children die from-and 11,000 become infected with-HIV/AIDS every day. And if there are indeed people with supernatural powers to heal the sick, raise the dead, and cure all ailments, why are human beings suffering and dying? It is quite obvious that all claims of miracles and faith healing are fake. As the French philosopher and writer Ernest Renan rightly pointed out, “No miracle has ever taken place under conditions which science can accept.”

Experience shows, without exception, that “miracles” occur only in the presence of persons who are disposed to believe in them. So, faith healers are just taking advantage of the African predicament. They are cashing in on the desperation and gullibility of Africans to enrich themselves and to promote their churches.

Africa needs science, not superstition; critical thinking, not dogma; open mindedness, not blind faith; reason, not revelation; and industry and technological advancement, not the Holy Spirit and miracles. Africa needs skepticism, not Pentecostalism.

Actually, real snake oil was prized for its reputed medicinal properties. However, those were modest compared to the claims of later cure-alls sold under the name “snake oil.” Here is an attempt to trace the evolution of both the product and its labeling-with examples from my personal collection (see figure 1).

Snake Hunters

Some Native Americans, including the Choctaws, reportedly treated rheumatism and other ills with applications of rattlesnake grease. The practice appears to have been copied by pioneers.

In 1880, a newspaper article on a Pennsylvania man-described as “a celebrated hunter, trapper and snake-tamer by the name of John Geer”-told how he killed rattlesnakes and extracted “oil from their bodies.” The article noted: “this oil is very usable and sells readily for $1 per ounce. It is said to have great curative powers” (“Killing Snakes” 1980).

Such a snake hunter was Peter “Rattlesnake Pete” Gruber (1858-1932) who operated a saloon and museum of curiosities in Rochester, New York. As shown in a rare photograph in my collection, he wore a snakeskin tie and coat, the latter studded with snake heads, and he sported a serpentine walking stick. He claimed an old Indian woman taught him to take out the rattlesnake fat and extract the oil to cure such ailments as rheumatism, stiff joints, carbuncles, boils, and earache. The snakes’ tissue-like outer skin was also used for poultices (Merrill 1952, 22, 27).

Another such hunter was Will “Rattlesnake Willie” Clark of Bolton, New York. According to a local tale (Lord 1999, 96):

Once he stopped at a pub to “wet his whistle” after a long day collecting snakes on Tongue Mountain. While he was imbibing, someone untied the burlap bag he had placed his captives in during the day. Suddenly cries of surprise and fear rose above the din of the bar-room as the snakes were noticed by the patrons. Willie immediately captured the half dozen escaping reptiles and returned them to the sack. The clients became very concerned, however, when old Willie admitted he could not remember if he had taken 6 or 7 of the crawling critters from the hills that afternoon. For the rest of the week the bartender kept a loaded shotgun behind the bar and visitors to the establishment carried forked sticks about with them whenever they went into the groggery.

There were many other snake hunters. In my collection is a Schoolcraft, Michigan, vendor’s license of May 26, 1881, permitting an otherwise unidentified “Snake Man” to “sell oil” for two days. I also have a 1906 postcard picturing one Abe Minckler of Kellam, Pennsylvania, a “Dealer in Snakes, Snake Skins, and Snake Oils.”

Snake Oils

The original snake hunters metamorphed into the later medicine-show pitchmen and other vendors of “patent” medicines. (A relative few of the ready-made nostrums were actually patented, since that required disclosure of their ingredients. Instead they merely had their brand names registered.)

From a decade of collecting antique “snake oil” bottles, I have identified no fewer than seven types, as follows:

1. Genuine snake oil. This appears to have been sold largely by local suppliers. I have a copy of an entry for “snake oil” that appeared in an 1830s store ledger; one ounce sold for twenty-five cents. I also once saw in a private collection an old blue-glass bottle with a label on which was penned “Snake Oil.” As I recall, it appeared to date from the mid-nineteenth century.
2. Liniment containing snake oil as an ingredient. Perhaps the most famous brand of this type was Clark Stanley’s Snake-Oil Liniment. Dressed in western attire and calling himself “The Rattlesnake King,” Stanley is said to have held crowds spellbound (figure 2). In 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, he slaughtered rattlers by the hundreds and processed the juices to make his cure-all. Its label noted it was for external use only and claimed it “Relieves the Pain of Muscular Rheumatism, Lame Back, Contracted Muscles, Sprains, Bruises, Corns, Chilblains, Frostbites, and Bites of Most Insects” (Fowler 1997, vi, 10-12). In 1917 (ten years after the federal Food and Drug Act became law) samples of Stanley’s liniment were federally seized and tested. They were revealed to be mostly mineral oil containing about one percent fatty oil (thought to have been beef fat), along with some red pepper (which would impart a soothing warmth to the skin) and possible traces of turpentine and camphor (Fowler 1997, 11-12). Among other liniments of this type was Blackhawk’s Liniment, sold by the Blackhawk Remedy Company of Baltimore. Its label pictured a pistol-packing, snake-vest wearing cowboy and boasted, “Positively Contains Rattle Snake Oil.” However, the label went on to state: “This product does not depend upon Rattle Snake Oil for its therapeutic effects.”
3. Snake oil in name only. One specimen of this type was sold in a generic screw-top prescription bottle by C.F. Sams of Durham, N.C. Its label proclaims: “Old Fashioned Snake Oil. World’s Famous-Double Strength. Recommended For Corns, Bunions, Toothache, Head and Chest Colds, Sore Throat, Cuts and Bruises, Arthritis, Headache and Sore Feet.” Despite its name and rattlesnake illustration, however, its list of contents (“Mustard Oil, Pine Oil, Petroleum Oil, Paprika, Camphor Gum, Oil of Wintergreen”) does not include snake oil.
4. Liniment acknowledging former identity as “Snake Oil.” Like type 3, this is clearly a transitional stage. An example is Miller’s Antiseptic Oil of 1916, sold by the Herb Juice Medicine Co. of Jackson, Tennessee. Its bottle was embossed, “Known as Snake Oil.” In 1929 it was restyled, the same bottle sporting a new paper label reading “Miller’s Anti-Pain Oil” and adding, “For Years Called Snake Oil But Does Not Contain Snake Oil.” Other examples of this type include one distributed by “Chief White Horse” of Madison, Wisconsin. The label reads, “Rub-in-Oil, that Famous Pioneer Liniment Formerly Known as Snake Oil.” Another was White Eagle’s Indian Oil Liniment whose label reads “Formerly called Rattlesnake Oil, the Old Indian Remedy for Rheumatism, Stiff Joints, Inflammation, Catarrh, Hay Fever.” Still another was Worner’s Famous Liniment of Phoenix, Arizona, whose label made no mention of snake oil but prominently pictured a wood engraving of a rattlesnake.
5. Liniments like snake oil but not advertised as such. One of these was Dr. Thomas’ Eclectric (sic) Oil which became Excelsior Eclectric Oil (in 1880) and (still later) Dr. Thomas’ Eclectic (sic) Oil. Formulated by Dr. S.N. Thomas of Phelps, New York, Eclectric/Eclectic Oil contained “Spirits of Turpentine, Camphor, Oil of Tar, Red Thyme and Fish Oil specially processed.” Other examples of this type were Omega Oil and the ubiquitous Sloan’s Liniment (which I recall my maternal grandfather using)-both containing an extract of Capsicum (cayenne pepper).
6. “Snake Oil” as a pejorative for any of various cure-alls-tonics, especially, many containing alcohol. These included Perry Davis’ Pain Killer (which became famous in the cholera epidemic of 1849), Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound (which transformed her into the most widely recognized American woman of her day), Swamp Root Kidney and Liver medicine (pitched by the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company), and Dr. Pierce’s Golden Medical Discovery (which was promoted as “the best Cough Remedy, Blood Purifier, Anti-Bilious, or Liver Medicine and Tonic, or Strength Restorer, of the Age”). By extension, any worthless remedy-bottled or not-is sometimes referred to disparagingly as “snake oil.”
7. Satirically fake “snake oil.” Generally modern, these spoofs on patent-medicine include “Dr. Jake Dawson’s Liniment Tonic” (now there is a contradiction in terms!), which is also billed as “Snake Oil” and “Hair Growing Tonic” promising “Immediate Relief.” (The label bears “stains” which-like the rest of it-were printed by the halftone-screen process.) Another of the genre is “Doc Wizzardz Original Snake Oil Elixir,” said to contain “Aged L.A. Tap Water.” Its label warns, “Danger: Not Fit for Human Consumption.”

Conclusion

Figure 2. Clark “Rattlesnake King” Stanley entertained audiences by killing rattlers and processing the juices for his Snake Oil Liniment. Today his bottles and flyers are highly collectible. (Author’s collection. Photo by Tom Flynn.)

Old-fashioned snake oil has largely disappeared. (One exception is a small bottle of Aceite de Culebra-snake oil-I picked up in Mexico. Sold as an “Emollient-For External Use Only,” it contains “cod liver oil and mineral oil.”)

Although I cannot attest to the effectiveness of genuine rattlesnake oil, many of the snake-oil liniments of yesteryear no doubt provided some relief to aching muscles and certain other minor afflictions-much like today’s popular heat rubs and other topical medicines.

But just as snake-oil liniments were eventually overtaken by outrageous cure-alls, so are today’s respectable over-the-counter medicines suffering unfair competition from various “alternative” treatments that range from the ineffective to the dangerous. In that sense, snake oil is not so much an outdated term but one that needs updating from time to time.

Acknowledgments

Rob McElroy helped find many of the snake-oil bottles in my collection.

References

• Fowler, Gene, ed. 1997. Mystic Healers and Medicine Shows. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Ancient City Press.
• “Killing Snakes for a Living.” 1880. The Spectator (Hamilton, Ontario), August 7:3.
• Lord, Thomas Reeves. 1999. Still More Stories of Lake George: Fact and Fancy. Pemberton, N.J.: Pinelands Press.
• Merrill, Arch. 1952. Shadows on the Wall. Reprinted Interlaken, New York: Empire State Books, 1994, 19-30.
• Morris, William, and Mary Morris. 1988. Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origin. 2nd ed. New York: Harper & Row, 535.
• Nickell, Joe. 1998. Peddling snake oil. Skeptical Briefs 8:4 (December), 1-2, 13.

Figure 1. Researcher Matt Crowley compares an alleged Bigfoot cast to a test cast he made. Photos by Matt Crowley

One star of the Bigfoot community over the past decade has been latent-fingerprint examiner Jimmy Chilcutt.¹ A number of Sasquatch casts have been identified with what appears to be a series of dermal ridges and valleys, what on the fingers we call fingerprints. In numerous television appearances, Chilcutt has presented himself as an expert on both human and primate fingerprints. On a November 24, 1999, Salt Lake City television show, he pointed to what he calls the “pattern flow” of the dermal ridges on a Bigfoot cast, explaining they were not human nor primate but from “a species in itself.” Furthermore, he says, “whichever you call it-Bigfoot or Sasquatch-from [this dermal-ridge] evidence, I can tell [there is an unknown] animal in the Pacific Northwest.”

In the documentary video Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, Chilcutt is prominently featured and is even more forceful. “I've come to the following solid conclusions,” he says. “Number one: there is a great ape living in North America, and number two: the friction ridges of this great ape are not human or of a known species. This conclusion may come as a shock to some people, but I stake my reputation on it.”²

To my knowledge, other than a posting on the Internet,³ Chilcutt has published no papers on his findings,⁴ nor has anyone outside the Bigfoot community examined his claims or theories. Reporting by other Bigfoot enthusiasts, including Christopher Murphy, provides only cursory coverage of Chilcutt’s work. From what I have been able to ascertain, Chilcutt has identified three Bigfoot casts as exhibiting dermal ridges with the particular non-human and non-primate characteristics he alone has identified. The three specimens are known as Wrinkle Foot, Onion Mountain, and the Elkins cast. Two of these three tracks are problematic: the imprint from which the Elkins cast was made came from Georgia, an unlikely spot to find Bigfoot,⁵ and the Wrinkle Foot cast is one of many tracks “discovered” by the late D. Paul Freeman.

To appreciate Freeman’s involvement with the Wrinkle Foot print, some background information is required. Freeman came to prominence within the Bigfoot community in 1982, when he allegedly saw a Sasquatch in the Mill Creek Watershed not far from Walla Walla, Washington. Casts were made of footprints near his sighting, and when examined, they revealed tiny dermal ridges and valleys in some parts of the imprint. Later revelations about Freeman and the tracks provided overwhelming evidence that the impressions were hoaxed. Longtime Bigfoot hunter Rene Dahinden called Freeman’s Mill Creek tracks “100 percent fakes, absolutely fakes.” Freeman later produced more than one set of Sasquatch hairs that turned out to be artificial fibers.⁶

Both Freeman’s Wrinkle Foot and the Georgia imprint came after the Mill Creek tracks, when dermal ridges became a major issue. Even Chilcutt recognized the possibility of faking dermal ridges (at least those looking like those of a human fingerprint), for in his television interview, he dismisses as worthless a track (looking suspiciously like one of the Mill Creek tracks), saying the “casting had been enhanced manually with a human fingerprint.”

Because of the dubious authenticity of the two other tracks, the third footprint, know as the Onion Mountain cast, is of primary importance. Found by veteran Bigfoot researcher John Green in August 1967, it predates the first understanding of the dermal ridge topic by decades and presumably represents an historic example of the phenomena.

Figure 2. A test cast shows how casting artifacts can mimic dermal ridges. Photo by Matt Crowley

Recently, a Seattle man, Matt Crowley, obtained a copy of the Onion Mountain cast.⁷ Crowley, a former pharmacist who now makes a living as an artist, conceived a series of experiments to try and duplicate the circumstances of the Onion Mountain cast. Working with painstaking detail, he tried to recreate the same hot, dry conditions of the original site. The result has been a series of test casts, which (as a product of the casting process) display virtually identical dermal-ridge-type surface characteristics (see figure 2). Crowley presented his findings at three Bigfoot conferences in 2005. The response from the Bigfoot community, so far, has been surprisingly positive.

The Onion Mountain cast displays three distinct patterns. The most obvious of the three is a series of what do look like dermal ridges running along the outside of the track. These are the ridges Chilcutt is referring to when he identifies for the television camera his “flow pattern.” Crowley’s experiments clearly show that Chilcutt’s “pattern” is an artifact of the casting process, appearing in all of the tests. The other two details of the Onion Mountain print are an apparent skin crease across the center of the print (Crowley calls it a curved furrow) and more lines similar to human dermal ridges, but not characteristic of the “flow pattern.” Amazingly we can see these other dermal patterns, including an almost identical curved furrow in Crowley’s experimental casts-again, all artifacts of the process. So compelling are the Crowley experiments that Daniel Perez, who chronicles the search for Sasquatch in his Bigfoot Times newsletter, named Crowley his “Bigfooter of the Year.”

Even Jeff Meldrum, the chief academic spokesmen for Sasquatch, has grudgingly conceded this piece of evidence for Bigfoot is lost. According to the December 2005 Bigfoot Times, Meldrum is quoted as saying, “However, I caution others not to extend the results of [Crowley’s] experiments beyond the conditions he has investigated, which apply to the Onion Mountain track site.” This is unnecessary, as Crowley has always maintained the Onion Mountain cast was a specific case and the results were the product of this particular set of conditions. But Meldrum is wrong. The Crowley experiments have a larger message: that seemingly impressive “evidence” for the Sasquatch monster can turn out to be no more than one man fooling himself. This is a lesson that is not confined to this specific track.

Obviously, Bigfoot enthusiasts need to examine claims carefully. When I spoke with Chilcutt by phone, he mirrored this sentiment, saying, “Matt has shown artifacts can be created, at least under laboratory conditions, and field researchers need to take precautions.”

Although Chilcutt admits Crowley’s work duplicated the friction ridges on the Onion Mountain cast, he maintains that the impression is of the foot of a real animal. He explains, “the Walla Walla [Wrinkle Foot] and Elkins casts display similar dermals to Onion Mountain.” Even the flow pattern appears in the Elkins impression, “although it is hard to see.” Besides, Chilcutt informed me, “John Green told me he saw the dermal ridges in the actual [Onion Mountain] track.”

“Not true,” replies Crowley. “I contacted John Green and specifically asked about dermals in the original footprint. I e-mailed him the question and he confirmed by return e-mail he did not see friction ridges in the Onion Mountain track before a cast was made.”⁸

Crowley, who describes himself as a Bigfoot agnostic, has shown how one can present negative findings to a Sasquatch conclave without alienating the audience. He has maintained a nonaggressive, focused approach, and many within the Bigfoot community have responded warmly. (Skeptics should learn from his example.)

For this observer of the people who search for Sasquatch, the general acceptance of Crowley’s experiments is a positive sign. I'm hopeful others will follow his lead in close examination of Sasquatch “evidence.” Perhaps Bigfooters will even begin to conduct experiments on tracks and other tangible items they believe to be from the Sasquatch monster. That is, if Crowley doesn't get to them first.

Notes

1. Jimmy Chilcutt was for many years an officer and fingerprint examiner for the Conroe Police Department in Conroe, Texas. He is now retired.
2. Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science. Directed by Doug Haijcek. 2002. Coon Rapids, Minnesota: Whitewolf Entertainment, Inc.
3. Chilcutt’s Internet item concerns his evaluation of what he sees as dermal ridges in what is known as the Elkins cast; see http://home.clara.net/rfthomas/papers/elkins.html.
4. To be fair, there are limited opportunities for a scientific paper on Sasquatch dermal ridges.
5. The Elkins cast is identified in the Chilcutt Internet posting as being from Pike County, Georgia, circa 1997. Many Sasquatch sightings are from east of the Rocky Mountains. One researcher has compiled reports of 486 sightings of the Bigfoot in Maryland. The late Grover Krantz believed that a footprint from Indiana, later proved to be fake, provided strong evidence of Bigfoot in the central United States. Vermont, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas, to mention only some, are areas of frequent reports of Bigfoot.
6. For more about the Mill Creek tracks, see my article in the Skeptical Inquirer, Spring 1989, pp. 264-272.
7. Richard Noll, a longtime Bigfoot enthusiast, loaned Crowley his copy of the Onion Mountain print and allowed Crowley to make a copy of it.
8. Crowley supplied me with a copy of the e-mail exchange made in November 2005.