“There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”
~Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
“WHAM!” Was the sound the rattan staff made as it impacted my left shoulder and chest. The sound was quickly followed by the warm prickly feeling of pain as it slowly made its way to my brain as it fully register the trauma my body had just experienced.
All I could think to say in that moment was a brief, “Ow…” as I hurt so much from the staff blow that I forgot who I even was momentarily and it took a moment for the world to come back into focus. I was 12, and, by that point, for about two and a half months had been taking kung fu lessons with my cousins and brother in a park in Los Angeles several times a week. When we had started, we were so excited as we were, naturally, going to be NINJA TURTLES.
We were much less excited when we learned that martial arts required you to do a lot of hard work to be any good at it. Our excitement died a tad bit more during our first lesson in genuine martial arts as the first thing we were instructed to do was to hold a horse squat stance. I cannot begin to adequately describe the sensations you experience in your legs as they burn in agony when you have had to hold a horse squat stance for more than 10 minutes. Our “si fu,” or teacher in Chinese, wanted to us to hold this stance as he took the time to give us a very lengthily introduction to himself and to the history of kung fu. Our teacher enjoyed talking with the slow steady cadence of molasses moving in February.
With time we eventually started to progress in our skills under his tutelage, and our teacher eventually started to teach us lessons beyond the ones just meant to educate us in developing character through cruel suffering.
On this particular day in practice, I had agreed to do rattan staff practice with another student but after I had a word with our teacher. Unfortunately that other student wasn’t skilled in the ancient art of listening, and took “I need to talk to the teacher” to mean “attack me with my back turned.”
Can you guess who earned an opportunity to hold another 10 minute horse squat that day? Our teacher spoke to him extra slow during this lesson.
I, appropriately, got to leave early that day as my left shoulder and chest burned pretty badly following the attack and my teacher could already see I was developing bad bruising from the strike. When I got back to my grandparents’ house after practice, I knew that the stinky brown fluid would come out of the medicine cabinet. Oh, how I hated the brown fluid! Soon I was shirtless and my mother and grandmother go to work on me and, after soaking a good sized wash cloth in the stinky brown juice, they slapped it onto my chest to soak my injury in. I soon began to envy my classmate as I would have preferred to be sitting in a horse squat rather than being marinated in those stinky herbs. The fluid had a strong alcohol smell and was full of all those stinky herbs from Chinese herbal stores I had been dragged to more times than I could count.
“Mom, do I have to do this? This stuff stinks!” I asked as I frowned fearing that I’d smell for days.
“Hush, this will make you feel better,” mom said as she and my grandmother instructed me in Chinese how I needed to keep the Dit da jow (or literally translated “hit & falls wine” or “knocks & falls wine”) on all night.
I really didn’t think the bruising was all that bad. It was mostly green and not nearly as dark purple as they were fussing to me about, and it wasn’t that much bigger than my head. It also only made my hand go numb if I moved it, like, at all. I would be fine! Plus, as my 12-year-old mind thought, this “snake oil” they were putting on me wouldn’t work anyways as it was all just some stinky herbs that the grandparents always had hanging about. I was 12 years old then, and, of course, I knew everything as I was already practically a full teenager. My voice didn’t even crack much at all anymore.
The next day I slept in late, as practically teenagers are oft to do, and when I arose I immediately got up to shower the stinky herbs off as I wasn’t going to keep it on me for more than I needed to. To my surprise, I discovered I could move my left shoulder again without any ache, and as I peeled off the plaster and looked at my chest I saw that the bruising had faded dramatically too. How was this possible? Isn’t this herbal stuff just “snake oil”? “Snake oil” is supposed to be fake…Right?
Why wouldn’t it work? My mother later pointed out to me that if all this herbal stuff wasn’t effective, what kind of grandmother or mother in their right minds would continue using it on her beloved children?
Stories have a lot of power.
Stories have always shaped how we perceive the world around us and even how we perceive ourselves and those around us in ways we rarely take the time to consider fully. Stories are so influential that even the word we use to define our own past and origins has the word story right in it – History. Stories are so important and powerful that world wide we happen to have this silly little tradition where we tell stories to children at night before bed to help them sleep. As the Doctor in Doctor Who once said, “We’re all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?”
The story of snake oil is a powerful one. If you do a quick search for “snake oil” online it will show that to this day “snake oil” still refers to something worthless or fake. It has been a story of fake cures and medicinal ever since a man named Clark Stanley came into a picture. Clark Stanley was a cowboy who was excellent at tall tales, and he was a man that was great at seeing opportunity and changing stories. History records him selling his “genuine” snake oil to help people heal and he had reportedly learned about it while studying with a Hopi medicine man in Arizona for 2 years. His oil was supposedly from an American rattlesnake, but, thanks to the early FDA, they found his oil to be made of up of beef fat, capsaicin and turpentine! There was no snake oil in it at all. Clark Stanley had stolen the story from Native Americans and early Chinese traditional medicine practitioners, and changed the ending into something different.
Growing up in the “wild west” I often got asked, or rather teased about the “snake oil” remedies my grandparents or my kung fu teacher had. All the tinctures, the syrups, the salves, and herbal remedies I grew up with were all referred to as “snake oil” by friends, and more than a few bullies. It was inevitable that all the stories of snake oil would eventually make me grow a bit skeptical with time, so for a while I would often roll my eyes whenever my grandparents would take me to one of their “stinky” herbal shops they frequented.
That eye rolling eventually faded as I watched all the “snake oil” products my grandparents used actually work. Eventually the fact that it all worked made me less skeptical and more curious instead. So curious, in fact, that I went to acupuncture school and learned all about the true story of the medicine and art. I learned all about the stinky herbs, the syrups, the tinctures, and, most of all, that I owed my grandparents and mother a big apology (and it only took two master’s degrees to get there)! I also learned, there really was a real snake oil and that its real roots lie in Chinese medicine, which you can read all about in a few history links I’ve left at the end of this article.
This is why fast talking con men are part of the story of “snake oil,” as what better way to swindle people than with than borrowing something with a good reputation to begin with? Fool’s gold isn’t effective in fooling a fool if real gold isn’t worth anything, right?
The Dit Da Jow my family used on me, it turns out, is one of the most famous of the herbal remedies used in acupuncture and often imitated by many trying to be a part of its story. It was developed by martial artists and recipes for it have been used for centuries to help with injuries from training and combat – Or in my case a sneak attack from a bad listener. It is so famous that schools of martial art and families often have guarded recipes they only pass down to family members and honored students.
In the lineages I learned from, I was taught to make two types, which we have in our clinic – One for new injuries (knocks & falls) and one for old ones (tendon lotion) – and both are a blend of the recipes I inherited from my family and my martial instructors and herbal training. Both forms help improve blood flow & Qi movement but they have slightly different “temperatures” – Which is why it is important to know the difference when you use them!
- Tendon lotion (Warm)
This tincture blends are infused with herbs that generate warmth and promote blood circulation. They’re ideal for treating chronic pain, arthritis, muscle stiffness, and conditions worsened by cold weather. Warming formulas are typically used to relieve deep-seated aches and pain that has been lingering for a long time, like lower back pain or arthritis, - Knocks & Falls (Cool)
Made with herbs that have cooling and anti-inflammatory properties, these formulas are best for soothing acute injuries such as sprains, fresh bruises, and swelling. Cooling Knocks & Falls can help reduce inflammation, relieve redness, and prevent heat from accumulating in the injured area.
The true story of Chinese acupuncture and traditional herbalism is that it is all about changing stories, changing the patterns and habits to make the ending better for people. This is why some people in the long story of acupuncture once upon a time called it magic, as it identified and changed the stories and patterns many thought was impossible to do. Will Durant once said:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
It isn’t impossible to change stories, nothing really is, it is just some aren’t comfortable with change, especially when it comes to a story they’ve told since they were practically a teenager. Change is hard, but when you’re ready, we can help you change your story. I’ll apologize in advance that it may require some you to be marinated in some rather stinky herbs.
Additional reading:
Friedman, J. (n.d.). How snake oil became a symbol of fraud and deception. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-snake-oil-became-a-symbol-of-fraud-and-deception-180985300/
Graber, C. (2024, February 20). Snake oil salesmen were on to something. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/snake-oil-salesmen-knew-something/
