Doctors and Distillers
The Remarkable Medicinal History of Beer, Wine, Spirits, and Cocktails
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- USD 7.99
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- USD 7.99
Descripción editorial
“At last, a definitive guide to the medicinal origins of every bottle behind the bar! This is the cocktail book of the year, if not the decade.” —Amy Stewart, author of The Drunken Botanist and Wicked Plants
“A fascinating book that makes a brilliant historical case for what I’ve been saying all along: alcohol is good for you…okay maybe it’s not technically good for you, but [English] shows that through most of human history, it’s sure beat the heck out of water.” —Alton Brown, creator of Good Eats
Beer-based wound care, deworming with wine, whiskey for snakebites, and medicinal mixers to defeat malaria, scurvy, and plague: how today's tipples were the tonics of old.
Alcohol and Medicine have an inextricably intertwined history, with innovations in each altering the path of the other. The story stretches back to ancient times, when beer and wine were used to provide nutrition and hydration, and were employed as solvents for healing botanicals. Over time, alchemists distilled elixirs designed to cure all diseases, monastic apothecaries developed mystical botanical liqueurs, traveling physicians concocted dubious intoxicating nostrums, and the drinks we’re familiar with today began to take form. In turn, scientists studied fermentation and formed the germ theory of disease, and developed an understanding of elemental gases and anesthetics. Modern cocktails like the Old-Fashioned, Gimlet, and Gin and Tonic were born as delicious remedies for diseases and discomforts. In Doctors and Distillers, cocktails and spirits expert Camper English reveals how and why the contents of our medicine and liquor cabinets were, until surprisingly recently, one and the same.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cocktail and beverage writer English makes a spirited debut with this vibrant cultural history of alcohol's transition from medicine to social lubricant. Gin and tonic, a popular concoction consumed by British soldiers in the 1800s to stave off disease and illness, for instance, incorporated "lime for scurvy, the fizzy water for anemia and other conditions, the quinine for malaria, and the gin as a diuretic." English also looks at the ways in which "beer, wine, and fizzy spa water inspired great progress in medical science": 12th-century physician Moses Maimonides prescribed wine for mad-dog bites, while the plague was combated with special beers. English knows his stuff, but he also knows how to have a good time. Cocktail recipes provided throughout are cheekily positioned: after a discussion of the maladies suffered by absinthe addicts, including "seizures, dementia, vertigo, hallucinations, violent outbursts... and epilepsy," English offers up an absinthe and champagne drink called Death in the Afternoon. Distillations made by monks (including the Carthusians with their Chartreuse liqueur) and aperitifs and digestifs also get their historical due. For the curious imbiber, or simply those looking for a few choice trivia tidbits to drop at cocktail parties (sadly, Saint Bernards never wore little barrels of brandy around their necks to revive those lost in the Alps), this is a winner.
