I admit to having some strange obsessions in my past: learning everything I could about the less popular mammals, Hawaiian music, erotic musicals & horror, and lesser-known musical instruments as art...but as I delve deeper into the world of olde Medicine Shows, Side Shows, Freak Shows and Quacks, I find myself feeling a deeper fascination than I have with other seemingly pointless interests.
This all started when I was younger and first watched Tod Browning's film masterpiece "Freaks" (1932.) A beautiful and strange film that actually cast real "freaks" (pin-heads, Siamese twins, the half-boy, the human torso, etc) and was banned for many years for that reason. I started to read up on the life of Browning, and found it fascinating, sad and artistically masterful. I started to read more...(see book list at bottom.)
Next I came up with the idea to write a novel called "Death Charmed Over." Oddly not about a side show at all, but rather based on the idea of Quacks (those wishful thinkers, delusional, and out-right criminal practitioners of medicine) and the all-out spectacular Medicine Show.
Perhaps this came to mind realizing that my favourite childhood character was Dr. Terminus ("Carry On..." regular Jim Dale) from Disney's "Pete's Dragon." The term "Snake Oil Salesman" became known to me as a youngster, and the insanity of the medicine show seemed both animated and somehow sinister -- but always completely fascinating.
What fun, I thought, to base my novel on such a charlatan, someone that doesn't have a cure for death, but rather tries to charm it over for the sake of a quick buck. BUT! What if this medicine man didn't want money...what if this one wanted destroy lives, murder and stop the industrial revolution from happening to preserve a world of magic and mystics? All because he was immortal and had been around since the beginning of time and was both bored with life and afraid to let it go? Knowing that a revolution will start that will accelerate the end of the world (and wanting to stop it) makes him a hero as well as a completely evil. Thus you have my creation: Dr. Festus Bacch.
I digress...what writing this has done has sent me into a world of books...researching the time frame in which the novel takes place, and all the different methods and lengths one would go to to sell their snake oils.
Tales of J.I. Lighthall (aka The Diamond King)...a man who became a real celebrity with his travelling "troupe" in the wild west...John St. John Long who specialized in consumption cures...Dr. Frank "White Beaver" Powell (Buffalo Bill's medicine man)...the list goes on, all seem fictional, but are indeed true...and in many areas of the world.
Now I haven't forgotten about the better-known Freak/Side Show, but the lesser focussed on Medicine show has peeked my interest as of late, it is worth looking into it yourself for sheer entertainment, history, and horror stories. It is also interesting to note that funnyman Sacha Baron Cohen performs a medicine show scene (to cure baldness) in the recent Tim Burton adaptation of Sweeney Todd. One of the screen's best snake oil salesmen can be seen in the Dustin Hoffman flick "Little Big Man."
It is not easy to find literature on this...but worth seeking out:
Mystic Healers & Medicine Shows by Gene Fowler
Quacks: Fakers & Charlatans in Medicine by Roy Porter
Quack! Tales of Medical Fraud by Bob McCoy
The Medicine Show Manual by Tom Jorgenson
and on Side Shows/Freak Shows and Tod Browning:
Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning by David J. Skal
The Monster Show also by David J. Skal
Seeing is Believing: America's Sideshows by A.W. Stencell
Circus! by Alan Wykes
Freak Like Me by Jim Rose
Snake Oil also by Jim Rose
and there's always Wikipedia!
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