In 1900, in Bonn, Germany, medical journals reported a survey of seven to eight-year-olds. Twenty-three per cent of children habitually drank liquor, and 8 per cent were given a breakfast shot of a “glass of spirits every morning by their parents so they might become strong”. It may seem alarming, by modern standards, that every day began with a fortifying morning dram. A habit dating back to the Late Renaissance.
After the Black Death pandemic killed almost half of Europe, strong liquor, especially compounded medical spirits, was increasingly desired as a daily preventive panacea or fortifying tonic, often supplemented with top-ups throughout the day. In 15th-century Germany, spirits were perceived as the universal ‘wonder drug’. Physician Michael von Schrick, in 1477, recommended half a spoonful of spirits every morning to prevent illness; his book was reprinted 14 times by 1500.
As urbanity and industrialisation drew populations together, poor sanitation and inadequate nutrition brought high mortality rates, along with recurring disease epidemics of smallpox, typhus, and cholera, which only encouraged the imbibing of preventative and curative nostrums. Compounding spirits with herbs, flavourings, and sweeteners became one of Europe’s principal medicines before the transition into recreational drinks.
Gaelic whisky first appeared as medicinal potions. Scottish King James IV, alchemist and “learned in the Arts of Medicine”, from 1494, sourced aqua vitae (malt spirit) from Lindores and Tungland abbeys, and from apothecaries in Dundee, Inverness, and Edinburgh to formulate elixirs and the illusory philosopher’s stone. Across the channel, Edmond Campion wrote in 1571 that inhabitants and newcomers in Ireland suffered from fevers, pains, and dysentery, “for remedy that they drank aqua vitae” (compounded uisge). In Britain and the colonies, whether in tropical climes or regions with pronounced seasonality, dread of illness drove consumption of distilled spirits. Other liquors were also increasing in strength, with higher-proof fortified wines (port and sherry), and the traditional home-brewed small beer (low alcohol) becoming commercially stronger (potent ales, porters, and IPAs).
The prevailing miasma theory maintained that putrid air spread disease by corrupting one’s humours. In Britain, it manifested as miasmic weather and smog in industrial cities and towns. In London in 1722, Frenchman de Saussure noted spirits were “necessary due to dampness of the atmosphere”. In Scotland, Charles Dickens wrote of the Scottish whisky toddy habit, “whisky at early morning, whisky at noon, whisky at eve.” In Barbados, Richard Ligon reported in 1649 that owners and their slaves needed a morning rum “comforter and refreshment” to prevent exhaustion. Six years earlier, the British Navy in the West Indies began issuing a morning shot of rum to sailors, while Mississippi boatmen drank proof whisky at breakfast, to relieve river stomach complaints. In colonial North America, by 1830, whisky was deemed “absolutely indispensable to man and boy” from morning till afternoon.
Western medicine was based on Galen’s doctrine of four cardinal humours, which upheld that alcohol restored balance, heat, and moisture to the body, counteracting excessive phlegm and black bile, to stabilise melancholy. At Edinburgh University, Dr John Brown, under his aggressive approach, prescribed strong, regular alcoholic drinks for immediate stimulatory effects in curing illnesses.
The 20th century delivered major advances in modern medicine, displacing unscientific methods and alcohol as therapeutic goods. Before whisky fell off its remedial pedestal, it had one last stand during US Prohibition, when doctors prescribed more than 145 million prescriptions of ‘Medicinal Spirits’. By the 1930s, alcohol was designated a drug; another morning drug, purine alkaloid, had superseded it. The depressant ethanol was displaced by a stimulating caffeine dose in the morning coffee, with espresso shots serving as the pick-me-up to seize the day. Carpe diem.
