Forget it, there’s no cure
Hard evidence of real remedy hard to find
The festive season is here again — and so is the hangover.
Despite a multitude of supposed remedies (the latest being a can of Sprite …), there’s no hard evidence that anything can cure the “wrath of grapes,” although some things — gallons of water or a massive carb feast — may ease the symptoms.
And looking back at what our predecessors advised, they were as much in the dark as we are.
Over the centuries, numerous remedies for the sickness, headache, trembling and selfloathing of overindulgence have proved just as effective as modern ones. That is, not very.
In ancient Roman times, sufferers were advised to try downing raw owl eggs, which might have helped, because eggs contain an amino acid called cysteine that is depleted by alcohol.
Natural philosopher Pliny the Elder advised lining the stomach with a meal of roasted sheep’s intestines before hitting the town.
By the 17th century, the herbalist Nicholas Culpeper was recommending stuffing the nasal passages with juice of tree ivy, while in 1824, a journal called The Medical Adviser described a shock treatment for anyone who had passed out from alcohol: vinegar was poured down the sufferer’s throat and rubbed onto his temples.
If he did not perk up within 10 minutes, “let him be stripped, and have a pail of water showered on him from three feet above his head.” Yow!
As print advertising took off during the Victorian era, commercial products cashed in. Tarrant’s Seltzer Aperient appeared in New York in the 1840s: an effervescing powder containing bicarbonate of soda, tartaric acid and potassium, it probably got some fluids and minerals back into the dehydrated body.
Cocaine — notoriously an ingredient in Coca-Cola until 1903, when it was replaced by “spent” coca leaves — was also used to reinvigorate the bleary-eyed.
In the U.S., party hosts of the 1950s were told they could save their guests from the hell of the morning after by passing round Quaff-Aid.
Quaff-Aid was actually brewer’s yeast. Rich in minerals and B-complex vitamins, it is still used as a remedy — but, as with all hangover cures, it can’t suddenly eradicate the poison from the system.
One 1940s hangover cure evangelist was more honest.
Writing in the 1947 new year edition of Dundee’s Evening Telegraph, “a doctor” said the best remedy for those who had been overdoing it was “a strong cup of tea or coffee, a stiff walk in the fresh air, and a solemn vow not to do it again — until next year.”