Brews You Can Use II

Desperate times call for desperate measures:

The Volstead Act didn't prohibit alcohol for medicinal purposes. Since beer had a history of being so used, the debate about its health value roared during the Roaring Twenties. Link. Excerpt:

The idea of alcohol as medicine was not new. As historian W. J. Rorabaugh wrote, Americans in the early 18th century classified whiskey, rum and other liquors as "medications that could cure colds, fevers, snakebites, frosted toes, and broken legs, and as relaxants that would relieve depression, reduce tension, and enable hardworking laborers to enjoy a moment of happy, frivolous camaraderie." Even the dour Puritan minister Cotton Mather, fearful enough of sin and subversion to help purge Salem of witches, believed that alcohol, used in moderation, could be "a Creature of God."

Once Prohibition took effect, many doctors championed alcohol as medicine. "I have always maintained that every family ought to have an alcoholic stimulant in the house all the time," one physician told the New York Times. "There is nothing more valuable in emergency." The doctor himself always took a drink at the end of the day–"It braces me up," he explained–and often prescribed it for patients stricken with "nerves." For pneumonia, he recommended a shot or two of whiskey.

But if many doctors conceded the efficacy of hard liquor, the case of beer was rather more controversial. Beer's champions often pointed to its relaxing qualities, and to its nutritional value. In a lengthy ode to British ale, for instance, one writer suggested that beer was so chock-full of vitamins that it had saved the "British race" from extinction during food-scarce plague years.