Drinking whiskey for medicinal purposes in old-time, and modern Phoenix

I'm not really a drinking man, but I keep some beer in the 'fridge in case friends stop by, and I keep a bottle of whiskey in the pantry for medicinal purposes, the way that people have done going back many, many generations. To our modern eyes the phrase "for medicinal purposes" seems ridiculous, and there seems to be a "smile and a wink" to the phrase, but it was a real thing, and it still is for some people, like me. It does require a bit of time-traveling to understand, so let's go.

I've set the wayback machine to 1911, when this ad appeared in the Phoenix newspapers. And yes, physicians often did prescribe whiskey. But not in the way that we think of how people drink hard liquor nowadays. If the first thing that springs to mind for you is frat houses slamming shots, or drunks passing out on the sidewalk, I really can't blame you, but whiskey really was something that people used in time of sickness, often to comfort.

Now let's be clear here on what type of whiskey I mean. This would be ordinary, made from corn and aged in oak barrels whiskey, nothing fancy, and definitely not from Scotland (which Americans call "Scotch" anyway). This isn't fancy, expensive stuff served in crystal glasses, this is something that sat on the shelf and was taken as needed, like cod liver oil. 

And while there was no chance of overdosing on cod liver oil, there was (and is) a very good chance of overdosing on whiskey, and people who were using it for medicinal purposes knew that. Getting blind drunk on whiskey wasn't what it was for, it was to comfort you as you waited for the bullet wound in your shoulder to heal, that sort of thing.

So don't be surprised to find a bottle of whiskey among the other medicines that you might find at grandma's house in 1911. Medicinal purposes only!

Thank you for the encouragement! If you want to see daily pics of my adventures on my recumbent trike in suburban Phoenix (just for fun, of course!) you can follow me on buymeacoffee.com/bradhall, and you can buy me a coffee if you'd like to!

  Buy Me A Coffee

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more