Medicinal Alcohol by Sarah E. Glenn
From ancient times, alcohol’s
potency has been revered and yet feared. It is the wine of Dionysus, the sacred barley-drink of the Eleusinian Mysteries, and the reason John Barleycorn
had to die. Even so, the classical Greeks warned against drinking unwatered
wine, and the Bible advises its readers to only drink in moderation.
Alcohol’s
use in medicine is equally ancient. Wine enhanced the potency of herbal medicines and extended their shelf life. The
invention of distillation improved this even further. Certain essences from
plants are more easily extracted by alcohol than water, and tinctures formed an
important part of the pharmacopeia before modern chemistry took over. Many
nostrums sold in the nineteenth century counted alcohol as a major ingredient,
their effect sometime heightened with narcotics. Homemade cold remedies like hot toddies and buttered rum were popular.
During
the 1830s, however, the Temperance movement swelled in the United States and
public pressure to ban alcohol sales mounted. Alcohol was seen as the source of
many evils, no matter the method or reason for its administration, and even
medical authority seemed to bend under the political winds. In 1917, shortly
before Prohibition began, the American Medical Association proclaimed that alcohol
was ‘detrimental to the human economy’ and had ‘no scientific value.’ The
organization passed a resolution that it was opposed to the use of alcohol as a
beverage or ‘as a therapeutic agent.’
The
AMA may have echoed the public sentiments of the time, but a medical loophole
was created in the Volstead Act for the therapeutic prescribing of alcohol. As
a result, medicinal alcohol, also known as Spiritus
frumenti, was prescribed throughout American Prohibition.
Under
the provisions of this loophole, only a physician with a proper permit could
write a prescription for medicinal liquor. Furthermore, the dose of this
medical dispensation was limited to one pint every ten days, or ten to sixteen
shots depending on the generosity of the patient’s pouring hand. The government
issued books of specially designed forms for this purpose. The designs were
changed often to outstrip counterfeiters.
Economist
Clark Warburton stated that the consumption of medicinal alcohol increased by
400 percent during the 1920s. By 1929, there were 116,756 physicians in the
twenty-six states that permitted the use of medicinal alcohol. According to the
Journal of the American Medical Association, about half of those physicians were
prescribing it for patients.
Kentucky was a major source for
medicinal alcohol. One of the more famous locations to take your prescription
for S. frumenti was Krause’s Drug
Store in Covington, Kentucky. Its unofficial name was the ‘Bootleg Drug Store’,
due to its no-questions-asked prescription policy and the still that Old Man
Krause kept in the basement. Other area pharmacists, particularly ones in
Cincinnati, often refused to refill prescriptions for alcohol and sent those
customers to Krause’s establishment. Mr. Krause, always the obliging health
provider, kept his store open during Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve,
and New Year’s Day so no customer would suffer without his medication during
the holidays.
Only
a small number of distilleries received permits to produce liquor for medicinal
purposes, several (once again) in Kentucky. The Stizel Distillery and
Brown-Forman were located in Louisville; another, Glenmore Distilleries, was
located in Owensboro. The longest-lived, the George T. Stagg Distillery,
operated along the Kentucky River in Frankfort. In 1925, it bottled 1 million
pints of ‘medicinal whiskey’. Today known as Buffalo Trace, it is one of the
few American distilleries that can claim to have been in continuous operation
since the 1700’s, due to its medical connections.
Sources:
Gwen
Mayo is
passionate about blending her loves of history and mystery fiction. She
currently lives and writes in Safety Harbor, Florida, but grew up in a large
Irish family in the hills of Eastern Kentucky. She is the author of the Nessa
Donnelly Mysteries and co-author of the Old Crows stories with Sarah Glenn.
Her stories have appeared in A Whodunit Halloween, Decades
of Dirt, Halloween Frights (Volume I),
and several flash fiction collections. She belongs to Sisters in Crime, SinC
Guppies, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, the Historical Novel Society, and
the Florida Authors and Publishers Association.
Gwen has a bachelor's degree in political science
from the University of Kentucky. Her most interesting job, though, was as a
brakeman and railroad engineer from 1983 - 1987. She was one of the last
engineers to be certified on steam locomotives.
Website URL: http://www.gwenmayo.com
Blog URL: http://gwenmayo.blogspot.com/
Facebook URL: https://www.facebook.com/Gwen-Mayo-119029591509479/
Twitter: @gwenmayo
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gwen-mayo-41175726
Skype: gwen.mayo
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4108648.Gwen_Mayo
Amazon
Author page: http://www.amazon.com/Gwen-Mayo/e/B003PJNWJE/
Sarah
E. Glenn has
a B.S. in Journalism, which is a great degree for the dilettante she is. Later
on, she did a stint as a graduate student in classical languages. She didn’t
get the degree, but she’s great with crosswords. Her most interesting job was
working the reports desk for the police department in Lexington, Kentucky,
where she learned that criminals really are dumb.
Her great-great aunt served as a nurse in WWI, and
was injured by poison gas during the fighting. A hundred years later, this
would inspire Sarah to write stories Aunt Dess would probably not approve of.
Website URL: http://www.sarahglenn.com
Blog URL: http://saraheglenn.blogspot.com/
Facebook URL: https://www.facebook.com/Sarah-E-Glenn-177315008966709/
Twitter: @SarahEGlenn
and @MAHLLC
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-glenn-216765b
Skype: sarah.glenn63
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4710143.Sarah_E_Glenn
Amazon
Author: http://www.amazon.com/Sarah-E.-Glenn/e/B004P3MI2Q
Comments
Being a teetotaler, I haven't drunk but a shot class of wine in my 71 years, and that was in Israel for the "runs." Good old Mogan David did NOT cure them, however.
Thanks for featuring new (to me) authors - it's always great to hear success stories by authors.