I think you meant to say "snake oil" days.
It used to be that one of the treatments for insanity was to lower the person into a pit of snakes....
The belief being that if it would scare a sane person crazy, it would scare a crazy person sane. What it did do was show up the fakes. The poor, truly insane person was either oblivious, or scared deeper into madness.
That is where the term snake pit came from.
I think you meant to say "snake oil" days.
Where do you think they kept the snakes used to produce snake oil?