In April of 1925, a Charlotte resident by the name of J.B. Grooms, whilst reading the newspaper, happened upon one of Nanzetta’s advertisements. A sufferer of “weeping eczema”, he read the testimonials and took heart in them. Maybe here at last was something that could help him with his painful and unsightly condition. He went to nearby Wohlford’s drug store, where Dr. Nanzetta was seeing clients, and presented himself for examination. The “doctor” looked at him closely and presented his diagnosis of psoriasis before “prescribing” Groom a course of treatment which Grooms obediently self-administered. Only his condition worsened, and his eczema became aggravated. Nanzetta visited him and told him his…

Needs Must in Virginia Nanzetta often lived his life, according to his family as well as others who wrote about life in the Medicine Show business (people like Violet McNeal [1]), “from hand to mouth”, as they say. His selling off of equipment in the fall of 1911 may have been for a need of ready cash, or it could simply have been a desire to change things up. In 1912, however, one item comes up for sale that offers a bit of a clue as to what might have been going on in the medicine man’s mind. A “Passion Play”, a film, black and white, that depicted the suffering,…

If the dark-eyed, long-haired Nanzeta of Los Angeles was a colorful figure who appeared frequently in the newspapers, the Nanzetta of Danville bore this quality in common as well. Of course we don’t know with 100% certainty that the two men are the same, but there are a lot of reasons to suspect they are apart from his description alone. At the very least, the Nanzetta of Virginia was every bit as colorful a character as the other. Goodbye California In March of 1905, The Los Angeles Herald published a piece with the headline “Prince Nanzetti’s Tiger Fat Works No Charm”. In the article, Nanzeta was said to have “explained…

Part One: The Advent of the Great Nanzetta~Newspaper accounts: Reported incidents of Nanzetta and his claims Part Two: Nanzeta, Prince of Tibet ~The Phenomenon of the Great American Medicine Show: The forgotten significance of the “Snake Oil” sales trade and its impact on modern advertising, pharmaceutical sales, performance theater, and medical law.~ Not All Tall Tales are Untrue: Why the story of an exiled Aztec noble might have sounded less preposterous then than it does now. Part Three: Marriage of a Montezuma ~The Oriental Remedy Company: An unreliable but valuable witness to the character(s) known as Prince Nanzeta, as well as a prime example of the methods, practices, malpractices, and criminology of the turn-of-the-century patent…

What’s in a name? Before Nanzeta’s court appearances in 1905, the aliases for the “prince” are many, but they don’t really get us any closer to his true identity. Remember that it’s only by searching the name Nanzeta, in all it’s variations, that we have arrived in California in 1902-1905 to begin with, and the similarities between Prince Nanzeta Montezuma and the Nanzetta of Danville aren’t in his name alone. The descriptions provided in the papers during this period identify the young Aztec Prince as being “a small, olive-skinned youth, with large, heavily fringed eyes, a full red mouth and long hair.” It’s difficult to imagine that this combination of…

Nanzetta would have struck Salt Lake City like a lightning bolt. We know very little about the young medicine peddler’s time in Utah, but we can guess much. Firstly… A Little Relevant Folklore To understand Nanzetta’s impact in Zion we must first attempt to get inside the mind of a turn-of-the-century Utahn, beginning with a little background on, yup, you guessed it: Mormonism. The Book of Mormon, of course, is the central book of scripture of the LDS faith and is considered by its followers to be a record of God’s dealings with the people of ancient America from about 600 B.C. to 400 A.D, the pinnacle of which being…

At the outset, I want to give some necessary credit to David Corp, who, during his time as president of the Danville Historical Society, covered this story before I did and since that time has been a tremendous help in finding clues and photos that I had overlooked or failed to find. I continue to work with DHS to put this story together, and I look forward to a cooperative effort between our organizations, as well as others. When I wrote my piece in 2020, I was ignorant of Dave’s work, but I would be remiss if I proceeded any further in recounting this story if I did not mention…