A few weeks ago they did a story on “CBS Sunday Morning” about “quacks”.
They mentioned that there was some German word for charlatan (or something) that sounded similar. This sounded likely.
Then, they mentioned that maybe it was also because of the way the old “snake oil salesmen” sounded. Which sounded like a stretch. They even played a recording of one of the guys and it didn’t sound anything like quacking.
Straight dope? Anyone got that german word, or an early usage?
According to this page, it derives from “Dutch quacksalver, from kwakken to quack + salf an ointment.”
It’s an abbreviation of quacksalver, first cite 16th century, from the Dutch quacksalver , (German quacksalber ).
The second element is from salve, to heal. The first is commonly regarded as the stem of quacken , modern Dutch kwakken , to quack.
Info from OED1.
I thought “quacksalver” was a variation on “quicksilver” (aka the element Mercury), which was one of the common tools of the sham-doctor trade.
The claims of phony healers do not echo, and nobody knows why. 
