Step right up

by Brooks McNamara

The immensely entertaining history of the rise and fall of an American institution, the medicine show

Genres: American History, History

233 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[MH]

McNamara gives a thorough look at the medicine shows, a combination con game, circus, and travelling dime museum that toured America in the 1800s and early 1900s. He uses a lot of photographs, ads and illustrations, and some first-person accounts of the performers and snake-oil salesmen who worked these shows, to create a very boots-on-the-ground look at this world. He's not interested in academic theorizing about what this vaudeville quackery meant to either the audience or America, there are some moments where the book feels uncomfortably dated (a lot of these shows toured with blackface acts, which McNamara too-gently excuses as being "guileless;" and a lot of these patent medicines were given phony Native American names and sold by white guys in Heap Big Chief headdresses, which he apparently doesn't see as a problem at all), and his conclusion struck me as a bit too wistful about these quacks and frauds (there are a lot of problems with the pharmaceutical industry, of course, but to imply that modern medicine is the same as Wizard Oil or Kickapoo Indian Salve is a bit much). But it's hard to imagine a more in-depth, well-researched look at this odd footnote in American theater, medical, and advertising history.