A brief history of the hangover

For the last 12, 000 years (at least) humans have been purposefully mixing fermented grain drinks, possibly even before the development of bread as a dietary staple. Almost every settled community across the globe has developed a form of alcohol and ceremonies based around the drinking of it. And ever since mankind discovered the wonders of fermented plant matter, humanity has also suffered the indignity of the hangover.

Egyptian hieroglyphics depict the pouring out of beer. Credit: WikiCommons

The term hangover only came to commonly apply to the aftereffects of a night of drinking around the turn of the 20th century. Before then, phrases such as the “morning fog” or “blue-devils” were used colloquially, and the phrase “bottle-ache” appears in several doctors’ notes from the mid-1800s.

In the UK, it was calculated that alcohol and the resulting days lost to hangovers accounted for almost £2.55 billion in lost wages. In Finland, over 1 million workdays are thought to be lost a year to hangovers, which is impressive considering the population is only 5 million.

One of the oldest and most persistent cures for a hangover has been to have another drink. The phrase “hair of the dog that bit you” comes from a Middle Ages remedy for a rabid dog bite, in which the patient drinks a concoction of honey, wine and the hair of the suspect canine. Not unexpectedly, this is an ineffective rabies treatment. However many will swear by it as a hangover remedy.

Dionysus, Greek god of wine, beer and inebriation. Credit: WikiCommons

In Ancient Egypt, the goddess of beer was known as Nephthys. She would answer drunken revellers’ prayers with the gift of vomiting, apparently allowing them to be hangover-free the next day. The Greeks had several gods of inebriation, from the most famous Dionysus and his son Comus, to the more beer and grain-specific such a Sabazios and Demeter. Drinking vessels can be found etched with prayers to Dionysus asking for the drinker to be blessed with a hangover-free morning after.
Pliney the Elder took some time to advise his fellow Romans on what to do after a night of overindulgence. His go-to cure was raw owls eggs, though he also recommends a nice fried canary with salt and pepper to taste. However he advises that drinkers are better to line their stomachs with a solid meal of roasted sheep’s intestine before a night on the town.
Sticking with the avian theme, ancient Assyrians would mix ground swallows’ beaks and myrrh whilst in Mesopotamia a mixture of myrrh, liquorice, cardamom, beans, oil and of course, wine was recommended to help shake off a particularly bad morning after. In Mongolia, pickled sheep’s’ eyes where the go-to restorative.

From a medicinal standpoint, eggs are a good source of the amino acid cystine which is key in the liver’s metabolism of alcohol by products. Meanwhile myrrh does appear to have some analgesic effects, at least on toothaches although the effects internally are somewhat less clear. There is, as yet, no medical opinion on pickled sheep’s eyes.

In Medieval England, normally the source of some of the worst medical advice on record, raw eel and boiled cabbage were the breakfast of choice after a night on the tiles. A spot of sushi and some veg doesn’t sound so bad.

By the end of the 17th century, branding begins to come into medicine. One of the more famous cure-alls on the market at the time was Goddard’s Drops. Developed by the physician Jonathan Goddard, they contained, among other things, ammonia, the crushed skull of a hanged man, dried viper and ivory. Goddard claimed his drops could cure everything from a hangover to bladder stones.

The trope of “throw a bucket of cold water over the sufferer” seems to appear in the early 1800s, along with drinking a glass of warm water and soot. A Victorian suggestion of rubbing vinegar on the temples seems particularly ineffective. Meanwhile out in the Wild West the cowboys developed something called “jackrabbit tea” made from rabbit droppings.

Hall’s Coca Wine: The Elixir of Life. Credit: WikiCommons

At the turn of the 20th century cocaine was in, and no good hangover cure was complete without it. A popular British drink called Hall’s Coca Wine combined both the hair of the dog with a hefty dose of coca leaves to make a “great restorative”. Also introduced in 1905, was a seasickness treatment called Mer-Syren, sold as a mystical herbal treatment from India,  but six years later the British Medical Association discovered it was nothing but powdered potatoes.

PG Wodehouse describes a drink made up of Worcestershire sauce, raw egg, tabasco and pepper, fed to a suffering Bertie Wooster by the manservant Jeeves in the his 1916 short story Jeeves Takes Charge. This is practically a Prairie Oyster (minus the vodka), a cocktail developed back in 1878 New York as a pick me up for those having a particularly rough morning.

Famous drinker Kingsley Amis published his book On Drink in 1972. In this he described the metaphysical (ie, nagging feelings of guilt and self-loathing) aspects of a hangover as much worse than the physical. He recommends getting your mental house in order to better sort out your physical self. For the body though he suggests trying beefpaste and vodka, or baking soda and vodka or tomato juice and vodka. You may be noticing a trend. He also suggests vigorous sex if you can find a willing partner.

During the Cold War, both the KGB and the CIA were rumoured to be developing pills that would allow their agents to drink without either getting drunk or suffering a hangover. Now several versions of these apparently anti-hangover pills, such as Chaser and Alcohol-X are on the market. They are based around the concept of activated charcoal, mostly using vegetable carbon to bind and filter “toxins”. None of these pills have been through any sort of thorough clinical trials, so whether or not they are effective is yet to be proven.

In 2009, a study by Newcastle University concluded that a full English breakfast is the best cure for a hangover. However the subjective nature of the beast means that it is hard to control from person to person and night to night what a hangover will become. Obviously the only way to avoid a hangover fully is not to drink. But if, for whatever reason, that seems unlikely, then staying hydrated, replacing electrolytes and getting lots of rest is the tried and tested option.

Publish Nouse Online 18/05/17

The sad story of Typhoid Mary Mallon

In the summer of 1906, the Warren family were summering on Long Island when six out of the eleven people staying at the rented house came down with typhoid fever.  Charles Warren wanted to know who to blame for the outbreak in his family so hired an investigator named George Soper. Soper soon decided that the most likely culprit was the cook, Mary Mallon.

Typhoid fever is caused by the bacterium Salmonella Typhi, which is easily transmitted through contaminated food and poor public sanitation conditions. One of the first outbreaks of typhoid is thought to have occurred in 430 BC Athens, killing a third of the population and helping to end the Age of Pericles.

In 1838, English doctor William Budd realised contaminated water was the factor in the spread of infectious disease. However during the American Civil War more soldiers were still killed by typhoid than died in battle and by the mid to late nineteenth century, the annual typhoid death rate in Chicago was 174 per 100,000.

Once Karl Eberth had identified the bacteria behind typhoid fever, it only look 16 years to develop a vaccine. The initial version of the vaccine was first used by British soldiers during the Second Boer War, and then 10 million doses of a more developed version were given to troops during WWI.

But for Mary Mallon, being accused of having typhoid in 1906 New York was insulting and degrading. Typhoid was now thought of as the disease of the dirty, unwashed masses. Not something that clean, proper folks caught.

Public opinion of “Typhoid Mary” was swayed by pamphlet campaigns. IMage: Flickr

From her childhood in poverty in County Tyrone, Ireland, Mary had immigrated to the United States alone at just 15. Her career as a cook for various wealthy New York families was impressive and well paid. By her mid-thirties she had built herself a small reputation around Manhattan for her fine peach ice-cream.

As Soper went through her employment records, he found that she had worked for seven families since 1900. In those households, 22 people had become sick with typhoid and one had died. Soon he had tracked her to her new workplace and the investigator confronted the cook.

Mallon was unimpressed by the strange man in her kitchen accusing her of infecting her employers, and chased him out with a meat fork. Soper then brought the New York Health Department and police officers to Mallon’s house.

Confused, and scared, Mallon ran and then put up a fight. Eventually she was taken into custody and placed in a quarantine ward on North Brother Island. There was no long term plan for Mary, she was kept in virtual isolation and treated poorly by staff and other patients.

Over 163 samples of various bodily fluids were taken from Mary, mostly against her will, and 120 tested positive for typhoid. Doctors did not understand at the time how she was able to shed the bacteria and yet show no symptoms of the disease.

Soon public opinion was moving into Mary’s favour. By 1910 was perceived as unfair that a woman that did no willful wrong could be held against her will. After three years in quarantine she was eventually allowed to leave the hospital on the understanding that she would no longer work as a cook.

Authorities eventually lost track of Mary, but in 1915 a typhoid outbreak at a maternity hospital lead to 25 sick and, sadly, two deaths. A woman named Mary Brown was working in the kitchens, and it didn’t take long for her to be recognised as Mary Mallon.

Once again, Mary was hunted down and arrested. It seems that she truly didn’t understand that she was capable of infecting people with this disease as she had never had typhoid symptoms herself.

None of the doctors had ever taken the time to explain to her how the bacteria could lie dormant, they had just demanded that she give up the only line of work she had ever known. However the public had no sympathy for Mary now and she spent the remaining 23 years of her life in quarantine.

Mary Mallon was kept in quarantine for over 23 years. Image: WikiCommons

By the time Mary Mallon died, 400 other asymptomatic typhoid carriers like her had been identified in the USA. None of the other carriers were quarantined like Mary, not even Alphonse Cotils who worked as a baker or Tony Labella who is thought to have caused over 100 cases of typhoid fever and at least five deaths.

Why Mary alone was forced to spend her life in isolation is unknown. It’s possible she completely refused to comply with demands to change her profession, that the trust was broken after the incident at the maternity hospital, or that doctors thought she was incapable of understanding her situation.

Mary died of pneumonia after suffering a stroke in the Riverside Hospital in 1938. Samples taken during her autopsy found evidence of typhoid still in her system. Mary was cremated and her name became synonymous with anyone who, knowingly or not, spreads sickness and disease.