“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.
The intertwined histories of booze and medicine, from internationally-renowned cocktail expert Camper English.
For much of history, alcohol and medicine were interchangable, a fact you can see with a glance at your liquor cabinet. In Drink Your Medicine, cocktail expert Camper English explores the surprising origins and medicinal properties behind most of the drinks we now use for less clinical purposes. Gin is flavored with juniper berry, which was originally thought to ward off the bubonic plague. The word "vermouth" comes from the German word for wormwood, so named for its ability to rid the body of intestinal parasites. Campari, whose origins date to 1860, contains gentian (proven effective against dyspepsia), rhubarb root (used in traditional Chinese medicine as a laxative), and until recently was colored with cochineal insects once thought to cure depression.
Camper English is an award-winning cocktail expert, writer, and educator famous for, among other things, developing the freezing technique that produces perfectly clear ice. Now, he takes us on a journey through the inseparable histories of spirits and medicines, of doctors and bartenders, and of cocktails and cures.
