Some herbalists owed their success more to marketing than medical knowledge. Tom Leung, who operated a booming herbal business in Los Angeles in the 1910s and 1920s, was particularly gifted at publicity. Though he claimed to be descended from a famous line of physicians in China and trained at the Imperial Medical College of Peking, his daughter, Louise Leung Larson, believes he invented those credentials. Leung advertised frequently in the Los Angeles newspapers, mailed Christmas cards to his patients, and gave away calendars and rulers with “T. Leung Herb Co.” printed on them. Along with a prosperous local practice, he conducted a national mail-order business, sending clients herbs after they filled out questionnaires detailing their ailments. One of his most popular products was Thousand Wonders Oil, which Leung used for “countless” problems ranging from toothaches to insect bites, billing it as “one of the most valuable and inexpensive remedies in the world.” As his reputation spread, Leung’s practice flourished, and soon he was wealthy enough to afford a mansion, decorated with expensive Chinese art and staffed with maids, cooks, and private tutors for his children.

The American medical establishment, viewing practitioners like Leung as serious competition, conspired with authorities to drive them out of business. In the early decades of the twentieth century, Chinese herbalists were frequently fined or imprisoned for practicing medicine without a license. Tom Leung was arrested more than a hundred times, but he took the situation in stride; recognizing that his success required defiance of the law, he accepted trouble with the authorities as part of the cost of doing business and incorporated the arrests into his regular schedule, developing a system so that his secretary would call the bank to arrange bail the moment the police arrived. The raids actually provided a windfall benefit: free publicity. “The [more] he was arrested, the more business he got,” his wife recalled. (Chang 165-166)