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Vintage Cocktails

A Quick Fix

Clinical Lectures on Certain Acute Disea...
Story of Wartime Quest for Quinine in So... Volume: v. 16 (1945)
Paul Verlaine, His Absinthe-Tinted Song,... (by Verlaine, Paul)
Poems of Paul Verlaine (by Verlaine, Paul)

When ordering a cocktail, the bartender may ask you to “pick your poison.” Ironically, the origins of many alcoholic beverages are rooted in medicine rather than toxic substances.

Years ago, many doctors prescribed alcohol to relieve pain and ease discomfort. Medical case notes from King’s College Hospital in London reveal that Dr. Robert Bentley Todd, best-known for describing the condition now known as Todd’s palsy, often ordered his patients brandy, wine, and porter.

Dr. Todd was an advocate of quinine, the first Western treatment for malaria. The white crystalline alkaloid is naturally found in the bark of the cinchona tree in South America. It works as a painkiller, reduces fever, and has anti-inflammatory properties.

Tonic water, which contained quinine, was a treatment for fevers and malaria. Its flavor was so disagreeable that British soldiers often mixed it with gin to improve the taste, hence the invention of the gin and tonic. Flavored by juniper berries, gin was used to treat various stomach ailments, gout, and gallstones.

In Clinical Lectures on Certain Acute Diseases, Dr. Todd mentioned a patient who “was seized with lumbago” and treated with morphia twice a day. When it was discontinued, “He was ordered two grains of the sulphate of quina three times a day,” and the pain disappeared. Read more about quinine in the Story of Wartime Quest for Quinine in South America.

The notorious green liquor absinthe also had medicinal properties. It contained wormwood and had a high alcohol content. According to Oxford Academic’s International Journal of Epidemiology, “The oldest known reference to medical use of wormwood dates from about 1552 BC, in the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus.”

In 1789, Dr. Pierre Ordinaire developed a recipe for an alcoholic drink that contained the dried leaves of wormwood. It was used to relieve the discomfort associated with indigestion, rheumatism, and intestinal worms. It was also prescribed to manage pain from childbirth.

His recipe later became the basis of the industrially produced absinthe widely associated with 19th century France. The “green goddess” was the poison of choice of many painters and poets, including Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas, and Paul Verlaine. The drink appears in the title of Paul Verlaine, His Absinthe-Tinted Song and in the title of a painting by Pablo Picasso.

Absinthe was believed to have mild hallucinatory qualities and received blame for inducing tremors and convulsions. In the early 1900s, the drink was banned in Europe.

In ancient Greece, wine was applauded for its therapeutic effects and was commonly prescribed for cancer, as well as wounds, gas, and bad breath. Hippocrates believed that it was a good remedy for many conditions.

Wine and beer were important to the Mayflower. When it sailed for the New World, it carried beer and wine rather than water. At the time, these beverages were always boiled prior to fermentation, so they provided safer hydration options than drinking water, which was often contaminated.

By Regina Molaro