For anyone who’s even remotely familiar with history, it’s no secret that life was very different during the Victorian Era. Most of our coverage of the period here on ViralNova focuses on Victorian death rituals, but let’s take a different approach today.
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Instead of keeping things morbid, we’re going to talk about something that almost everyone can get behind: beer.
Believe it or not, Victorians used beer for medicinal reasons. Beginning in the late 1800s, bartenders sometimes doubled as pseudo-physicians.
One of the most common medicinal beverages was known as “malt extract,” which was a mixture of hops and malt with an unusually high alcohol content. It was so alcoholic, in fact, that it easily made people forget about their troubles.
These so-called “therapeutic beers” promised to cure everything from gonorrhea to insomnia. Oddly enough, they were also prescribed for hangovers.
While name-brand breweries got in on the action by producing their own medicinal tonics, many smaller operations sprung up all over the country. One of the most notable was the Liebmann Breweries franchise.
While all of those tonics felt good going down, they certainly never cured anything. In fact, there’s a good chance that they just made people feel worse in the long run.
(via The Pandora Society)
Ah, the Victorian Era. It truly must have been a paradise for those dealing with alcoholism.
Read more: http://www.viralnova.com/victorian-beer/