Medicine show

They developed from European mountebank shows and were common in the United States in the nineteenth century, especially in the Old West (though some continued until World War II).

Entertainments often included a freak show, a flea circus, musical acts, magic tricks, jokes, or storytelling.

The entertainers, such as acrobats, musclemen, magicians, dancers, ventriloquists, exotic performers, and trick shots, kept the audience engaged until the salesman sold his medicine.

[1] Itinerant peddlers of dubious medicines appeared in the American colonies before 1772, when legislation prohibiting their activities was enacted.

[2] These "medicines" seldom treated the specific symptoms of an illness, instead relying on stimulants or other drugs to produce a pleasurable effect.

Alcohol, opium and cocaine were typical ingredients, and their addictive qualities provided an additional incentive for consumers to continue buying them, while their supposed medicinal benefit afforded a sufficient excuse.

[3] Hamlin's Wizard Oil Company troupes travelled in specially designed wagons, with built-in organs and space for musical performers.

[3] As reliable commercial pharmaceuticals were produced on an industrial level in the early 20th century, the reputation of and market for home remedies began to dwindle, and medicine shows came to rely ever more on their entertainment value.

But as America's population became less rural and more urbanized, the availability of other forms of entertainment, such as motion pictures, vaudeville and later radio, led to the gradual disappearance of the traveling medicine show.

Scott sang, played guitar, performed ventriloquism and blackface acts, and pitched Chambers's Herb-O-Lac herbal laxative.

When Chambers retired in the late 1930s, Scott took charge of the show, performing for many years with his wife, Mary, and his sidekick, Gaines Blevins, known as "Old Bleb".