Good Day World!
The need to be able to treat hangovers is steeped in history.
From cabbage to fried canary and milky Coca Cola, potion-mixers, scientists, and bartenders have long attempted to stave off the dread-ache of the hangover.
Today let’s look at how the ancient’s addressed the problem, and then the more modern cures for hangovers.
Ancient Cures
Cabbage seemed to be the biggest remedy during ancient times—it’s been documented in texts on classical Greeks and Romans as well ancient Egyptians.
Five hundred thousand papyrus texts from Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, dating back to the second century AD (1,900 years ago) were dug up by Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt from 1896 to 1907, and experts have been translating their contents ever since.
Just recently, one of the medical texts was found to contain a “drunken headache cure,” now more popularly known as a hangover cure. Are you ready for this ancient knowledge?
The text suggests that sufferers “wear leaves of Alexandrian chamaedaphne strung together.”
Alexandrian chamaedaphne is a shrub available online and more commonly known as “poet’s laurel,” should you want to actually give this a try.
By the late 1600s, chemists and herbalists had begun to concoct their own scientific mixtures for curing the hangover.
English physician Jonathan Goddard created his eponymous remedy Goddard’s Drops, which contained ingredients like ammonia, the skull of a person hanged, and dried vipe
The quickest way to cure a hangover—well, someone who had passed out from too much drinking—in the 19th century was shock therapy, according to The Medical Advisor, a semi-professional/semi-ridiculous health journal.
It suggested pouring vinegar down the victim’s throat and then rubbing it on their temples.
If that didn’t work, strip them naked and throw a bucket of cold water on them!
Modern Cures
The first aspirin tablets were made in 1915. Alka-Seltzer was introduced in 1931.
The Bloody Mary—a go-to tomato-based vodka drink perfect for the morning after—was introduced in 1934, mixing both the “hair of the dog” and plenty of anti-oxidants to rid you of your blues.
Adhesive patches like Bytox, which are applied before you drink, promise t
Canned drinks like Mercy contain up 5,000 percent of the daily value of certain vitamins. They can be ingested sporadically or used as a mixer throughout the night (though a can of Sprite seems to be the latest trick).
New York’s I.V. Doc will make house calls, administering bags of liquid vitamins, glutathione and amino acids straight to your veins soon after waking up. In an hour you’re back in action.
There’s literally hundreds of more supposed cures. I don’t have the space for all of them here, but I’ve got some good links for you:
10 Hangover Remedies: What Works?
11 Ways To Ease A Nasty Hangover
Everything Science Knows About Hangovers—And How to Cure Them
Time for me to walk on down the road…
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