Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Alcohol

Episode Date: December 30, 2014

This week on Sawbones, Dr. Sydnee and Justin are getting absolutely, figuratively tanked. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net) ...

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Saabones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. Hey everybody welcome to SawBone's Meryl Tour of Miss guy to medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McElroy and I'm Sydney McElroy Sydney it's New Year's Eve
Starting point is 00:01:13 practically and as you leave New Year's Eve Eve and I am ready to get Cronk oh Are we gonna are we gonna do that as young parents? I'm ready to get crank. I'm gonna stay up till 12, 15. As yeah, as young parents, I don't know that we can make it till 12, 15.
Starting point is 00:01:32 My steps are 12, 15. I'm gonna have a glass of shampoo, I'm gonna get wild. Is that enough to get crank for you now? I'm gonna glass of champagne. I'm gonna stay up long enough to see the first performance of Pitbull on Ryan C. Cress, but I won't see his return to the stage at 1220. I will be out. But 1215, I will see you there.
Starting point is 00:01:54 I'm gonna need you to wake me up most likely at midnight. Was the countdown starts? Yeah, just and I'll like very sleepily kind of, we need to keep it down, like be quiet. Yeah. Because Charlie will be sleeping. The main thing is this shampooing in though. Right. So I figure a lot of people are gonna do a lot of drinking. Mm-hmm.
Starting point is 00:02:16 You know. Yes, they are gonna get crunk. Uh, so I thought- With crunk juice. Right, what is crunk juice now? I think it's alcohol. I'm pretty sure. I don't I'm not well versed on crunk. Where are the juices involved in crunking? No, no, the juices are a mystery to me.
Starting point is 00:02:33 Are E I E, crunk? I thought in light of all the crunking that will be happening in the next two days. Crunk juice consumption. Yes. That it would be appropriate to discuss the history of alcohol or crank juice or whatever you prefer, as it pertains to medicinal use. Okay, Sydney, so tell me about the use of crank juice as medicine. Well, first of all, let me just thank several people who have suggested this. Actually, I think as far back as like October of 2013 was when people first started saying,
Starting point is 00:03:08 hey, you should do this topic and you're right, and we are now. So thank you to Jason, thank you to James, and thank you to Catherine. Excellent, thank you. You all independently, unless it was a plan, unless it was a plot. Longcon.
Starting point is 00:03:20 Yeah, I think you independently suggested this. So alcohol, I mean, we know that alcohol has been around for a really long time, right? Who knows how we first discovered it? You know that you could ferment things and it was wonderful. I don't know. The Egyptians were like, we want to get cranked, but how? How does that happen? It just happened. Things would become fermented and then they would figure out that it was awesome. and then it was like, how can we make that awesome thing? Going trick idiot Jerry, the village idiot, and drinking it. He was like, hey, guys, I don't want to cause a panic, but I'm crunk right now.
Starting point is 00:03:54 It was probably like fruit that went over. I would imagine. One time I left a bottle of Mountain Dew in my bicycle bottle, my bicycle, I've got a touch water bottle and a left mountain dew in there. And I forgot about it for like four months and then I went out to get it and it smelled like terrible. And I thought that I created alcohol.
Starting point is 00:04:15 I don't think so. I don't think that's how it works. I don't think Mountain Dew for men's. I don't think it does, but it smells bad. I thought it might have been Mountain Dew wine. I did not- It's also, but I can't imagine that it would be any worse for you than Mountain Dew already is.
Starting point is 00:04:29 Probably not. Probably not. Or any soda. I'm not hating on Mountain Dew. I don't want to get, I don't want to get letters from Mountain Dew. They're always listening. They're waiting for their chance to pounce. So, it is not great for you drink it in moderation. There you go. There you go. So, they found beer jugs as far back as like the Neolithic period. How do you know it's a beer jug that labeled?
Starting point is 00:04:49 It's got the Budweiser logo. Beer jug. It has like the the Happy Hour special stuff to it. She's old on it. The Egyptians drank the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese. We found evidence from all ancient civilizations that they were drinking alcohol. But as but in the, But in the original consumption of alcohol, it was really from medicinal and health benefits. It was part of religious ceremonies, but it was largely thought that drinking was good for you. That's where the toast drink to your health, or drink to your health. It comes from that idea, and you can find that independently, that toast in multiple different cultures,
Starting point is 00:05:27 just arising because of the concept that we're going to be drinking literally for our health. One of the earliest known recipes, by the way, this is found on a Samarian clay tablet from like 4,000 years ago, was a beer recipe. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So one of the first things we were like,
Starting point is 00:05:47 we figured out how to do this. We've got to make sure everyone else knows. I don't know how to write yet, but I'm gonna invent writing so I can write down a recipe for beer. For beer. In the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Scorpion the first, which by the way,
Starting point is 00:06:04 pretty cool name. Awesome. Pretty awesome. Yeah, scorpion. How did I never know there was an Egyptian pharaoh name scorpion? I like that he's the first. Like, don't even try to front. I am the first scorpion. I'm the first guy with a sweet idea to call myself scorpion.
Starting point is 00:06:18 There wasn't even a scorpion in the second. He just wanted to make sure, but he knew. No. Sorry, haters. They found in his tomb a jar with the remnants of wine and medicinal herbs, which is why we believe that they were using alcohol for medicinal purposes, because why else would you have a bunch of things
Starting point is 00:06:34 that we knew they were using for the health benefits dissolved in wine? You know, clearly it was some sort of health beverage. Hippocrates, do you know he made an ancient form of vermouth? I did not know that. He also experimented with wine and herbs and mixing them together to make like an herbal liqueur kind of thing.
Starting point is 00:06:56 And he used it for deworming people. Oh, well I mean he pretended to. Well yeah, right. Yeah, I don't know that that would actually deworm you. I don't think so. I don'tworm you. I don't think so. I don't know though. I mean, we could try it. All right, I'll give it a whirl.
Starting point is 00:07:09 All of these things are great to try because they involve drinking. Yeah, drinking. Sure. If the worms come out. Who knows? If not, you won't care. Having a martini check for worms.
Starting point is 00:07:21 The Romans also jumped on this bandwagon. And that's really where we see alcohol playing the largest part in medicine is it's used to extract the medicinal properties like the active ingredients from herbs. So like if you put anything in alcohol, it's going to help kind of, you know, I mean, if you could think about it like breaking it down, dissolving it and extracting the stuff from it that is useful, alcohol is good at that. And then occasionally it was used as an anesthetic.
Starting point is 00:07:47 Oh well that would work right. I mean like a local anesthetic or just like drink up. Like drink up. Okay. Drink this until you pass out and then we'll do an ancient surgery on you. Woo man, talk about your bad hangovers. That one will get you. Will you wake up in your heads pounding and also oh my god my scar is using. Also they drilled a hole in your head so that was will get you. Will you wake up in your heads pounding and also, oh my God, my scar is oozing. Also, they drilled a hole in your head. So that was also what happened. It was the Arab scholars who discovered distillation. And so this was at this point, this is where we figured out that we could make alcohol
Starting point is 00:08:19 routinely. We understood the process, how to distill it and create it. And this also became very important because the beverage that we were creating understood the process, how to distill it and create it. And this also became very important because the beverage that we were creating in the process of distillation was sterilized, right? Because you've got to boil the water. And so the thing that was created was much safer to drink than a lot of the water at the time. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, because it was, it didn't have all the weird botulism and plague germs that not those but you get the idea. You know, you know germs like cholera. I don't know. I've told you people about germs and then this so yeah, so the germs wouldn't be in the water or in the alcohol
Starting point is 00:09:00 water that you were drinking because but they're in the regular water. So they started calling the distilled alcohol a aquavite. Oh. Water of life. Water of life, sure. It was interesting because whiskey was invented not long after that. And the word whiskey comes from the gay lick word
Starting point is 00:09:18 for water of life. Now, were they just stealing it? Copy, copy cats. Or is it just, Did we just arrive at it that Copying it, copycats? Or is it just... Did we just arrive at it that naturally? Yeah, that alcohol is indeed the water of life. Is that obvious? It was also understood that alcohol was an antiseptic
Starting point is 00:09:34 pretty early, you know, that if you applied it to surfaces, it would help cleanse them. That's weird, because we didn't even understand like germs, a germ theory, that thin and stuff, but we saw something with alcohol. Well, we knew that people who drank alcohol didn't get sick the way people who just drank water did. I bet it burned too.
Starting point is 00:09:52 I bet that was part of it. You know what I mean? Like it had a little bit of a burn, a burn to it. Maybe that felt like, I don't know, but I bet that's doing something. That would make sense, because you think about a lot of our treatments at the time where things that would make us pee or puke or you know right have pain and diarrhea so you know or things
Starting point is 00:10:10 that smell bad. This actually has led some you know modern day scholars to believe that maybe maybe there's such a perclivity for alcohol now right like multiple cultures drink a lot of alcohol. We if you look at the stats, Americans drink, I mean, tons of alcohol on average each year, not all. Literally, tons. Tons. And we are like ranked 39th out of drinking countries. So we're not even close to the top of the list.
Starting point is 00:10:38 But that being said, clearly a lot of people like to drink. So maybe it's because our ancestors who drink alcohol out lived those who didn't. Oh, you're saying like, are you telling me that we evolved a desire for alcohol? I'm not saying I know this. I'm saying it's possible because drinking alcohol was safer than drinking water back then. I approve. I approve of this evolutionary step. You didn't die of cholera if you drank the booze, so. So if you don't drink, it's unnatural. And you're marked for extinction.
Starting point is 00:11:15 I'm not saying that. I am. I'm not saying that. I am. So like I said, the most prominent use of alcohol was to dissolve other herbs or plant substances or something that would make a medicine. And this is interesting because this was actually the basis of some liquors.
Starting point is 00:11:31 Um, gin, for instance. You know what, what is put in gin, what the active, you know, tastes like pine needles, but I don't think that that's what it is. Wait, wait, wait, wait, Juniper berries. Yes. I knew I had that in there somewhere. And they were a popular diuretic. Oh, okay.
Starting point is 00:11:46 So they would dissolve Juniper berries in alcohol and use it as like a stomach tonic, but it also made gin. Perfect, there you go. Chartruths and Benedictine, have you heard of those two lacours? Uh, Chartruths, I think, yeah. They're Benedictine. Well, they both, same idea.
Starting point is 00:12:03 They're both like herbal lacours that were invented as medicines by monasteries. Monks actually made them. Brandy was a popular alcohol that was used at the time to fight the black death actually. Okay, well that wouldn't work but man I do like Brandy. I thought you would appreciate that. I'm gonna see that. And Crim Dementh was actually invented as a digestive to take after a meal to help your stomach work better. How about woodwork, right? Because the mint does have some sort of digestive properties, wouldn't it?
Starting point is 00:12:36 I mean, yes, mint can calm an upset stomach, but at the same time, I mean, it's an alcohol. Right. I don't know how much alcohol ever calms your stomach, so at least not mine. We should tell everybody at this point before we head to the billing department. We have been joined once again by our third host
Starting point is 00:12:57 on Sabons Chuck, aka the Poodle, aka the Puddle, aka the Pickle, is everybody calls her or their race kind of split on that? We're just Charlie Gale. Or just Charlie Gale if you like that. So if you do hear some cooing, you are not having podcast technical difficulties. It is a human baby.
Starting point is 00:13:14 We thought she'd nap. She did and. But hey, let us, let's go to the bowling department. Let's check it out. The medicines, the medicines that I've skilled in my car before. So for many, many years, you years, following this kind of ancient pattern, alcohol was a widely accepted treatment. As we move into the 17 and 1800s, people thought of it interestingly as both a stimulant and a depressant. They thought that it would stimulate your heart to pump your blood better and make your circulatory.
Starting point is 00:13:45 I could see that for a little while. For like a little while and then you overshoot and then it's a depressant. Oops. Exactly. And you know, it's funny because they would talk about, it's so great because it raises your pulse and your blood pressure, which I don't know why that was,
Starting point is 00:14:00 like it's great, my blood pressure is through the roof. Yeah, this is wonderful. Thanks, alcohol. Thanks, alcohol. Thanks, alcohol. I don't know how blood works. But they also recognize that it was a depressant because they knew that it would relieve stress and anxiety and ambition and make you go to sleep
Starting point is 00:14:15 if you drank a lot of it. One of my favorite quotes from a physician, I think this was actually in the 1800s, said, alcohol is, I suppose, the most valuable sedative and hypnotic drug we possess for infants and young children. Uh-oh Chucks into that though. She'll get crank baby crank. You ever see a baby get crank. It's amazing We didn't get her baby. No, we're just breast milk. Just all she gets. Yeah, that's it It was prescribed for Anything, you know, because it would make you feel better
Starting point is 00:14:48 or sure. No matter what was going on. So let's say you have a cold or worse pneumonia. Alcohol. Maybe you've got a fever. Alcohol. Frostbite? Alcohol.
Starting point is 00:14:58 Snake bite. Alcohol. Depression. Alcohol. Did you break your leg? Alcohol. There you go. Alcohol. The most widely accepted remedies were actually whiskey and brandy. Brandy was the first one. Brandy was really thought to be the king of all the you know medical alcohols. Whiskey became as popular largely because it was just the thing
Starting point is 00:15:17 that was available in other areas. Yeah. So I like that reasoning though. Well, we don't have brandy. So um whiskey works just as well It works okay totally works. I've had bartenders try to pull that track on me before we don't have Brandy Maybe you want some whiskey in your horse's neck, but I don't on what Brandy? Ginger ale and bitters. It's a different thing the different thing Brandy was actually often used for fainting victims when they were unconscious They thought the best way to revive them was to pour some brandy down their throat. Now this would probably work. As you choked on brandy, you probably would wake up. What a fine wake up it would be. Alcohol was also put in a lot of
Starting point is 00:15:57 tonics and cough medicines. It was given to people in hospitals who couldn't eat. So it was thought to be an appetite stimulant as well as just a good source of calories. Oh, sure. Beer was used in this way. Well, just give them some beer, because they can't eat anything right now, but maybe we could just give them some beer. Licker is surprisingly dense in calories.
Starting point is 00:16:18 You know, for an ounce of hard liquor, like a whiskey or brandy, it's 60 calories for an ounce. That seems like, yeah, that's a lot. It's dense. Yeah, and I think people often think of like liquor as like the low cow alternative to beer, not that certainly beer is that low.
Starting point is 00:16:34 Beer usually, especially good beer. Right, you're gonna be looking at 2,250. It's worth drinking. TB patients were sometimes put on alcohol drips. Is that not, is that another thing that still happens? No, we don't, we don't put patients with tuberculosis on a drip of ethanol. What about for hangover patients and give them all
Starting point is 00:16:52 here are the dogs? No, we don't, I can't think of a time when I've written for an ethanol drip. But you do write though for beer, right? Like you can write for beer. Well, that's funny. You're skipping ahead, but I'll go ahead and let you do it. I didn't even do it. I'll go ahead and let it do it. I didn't do it.
Starting point is 00:17:05 I'll go ahead and let you do it. You can actually now in the hospital write for beer, like order beer to be given to the patients. If, like, let's say they are an alcoholic, you know that there's someone who's going to withdraw and withdraw from alcohol is deadly. I think we talked about this on our alcoholism show. So you have to treat it.
Starting point is 00:17:24 If you know they're going to go back to drinking and maybe they're not going to be the hospital very long, you can order beer to give them with their meals or snacks. My prescription bud. To prevent, to prevent them from having withdrawal. I got to tap the rock. He's at the prescription. Now, let me just say, I've never done it. We all talk about how we can do it. We know that I think that they give like,
Starting point is 00:17:50 bud light or something. Yeah, ain't gonna be good. You're gonna get your face, but you're not gonna enjoy it. You're not getting craft beer, but I've never done it. I just know that you can do it. Back then, you wouldn't just give somebody a can of beer. You were gonna give them alcohol and you could do it orally. You could do it. Back then you wouldn't just give somebody a can of beer, you were going to give them alcohol and you could do it orally, you could do it IV, you could do it I am meaning an
Starting point is 00:18:10 intermuscular injection to just give a shot of alcohol, like literally a shot in the arm or rectally if they couldn't take anything by mouth. Ah, of the option, I'm just going to go ahead and sip it. I'd rather not put it in my butt, in my butt. Right, I think that's always, that would be my reaction to anything. I would rather sip it, just put it in my butt. You should just know in case I ever lose the power of speech because of some medical ailment, not in my butt.
Starting point is 00:18:38 Not in your butt, okay, the general role, not in your butt. Living will, not my butt. It's a very short living will. Forward, not in your butt. Living will not my butt. It's a very short living will. Forward, not in my butt. I have a bracelet. I have medical ID bracelet. It says not in my butt. In I M B.
Starting point is 00:18:55 There's a picture of a caduceus. And then it says not in my butt, please. We've talked about patent medications a lot before, but as you know, alcohol was the basis for many kind of the fake medicines, the no-stroms that were petaled by salesmen and charlatans, because it made you feel good, so it seemed like it might have been doing something. So it was used for sleep, for colds, for liver problems, ironically, for teething children,
Starting point is 00:19:25 just give them some alcohol. Sure, rub it on the gums maybe. Or maybe if they won't go to sleep, really anything. Bitter, you mentioned Bitter's earlier, they were created as like a medical, you know, as a medical use of alcohol. They were supposed to improve stomach tone for appetite and for stomach function.
Starting point is 00:19:44 So that's where angustous bitters come from. Oh, as a stomach, I wonder if you're supposed to take them by themselves or maybe mix with something. Well, they would suggest mixing them in a cocktail, but you know, it's funny now, the thought is, was that more because the bitters were not pleasant to take alone? So you just mix them in a cocktail so you can get your medicinal bitters down. Yeah, yeah. I don't know maybe
Starting point is 00:20:05 I'm not saying that's true, but that's a thought now interesting But as with all good things as with our our marijuana episode our cocaine Is coming along to ruin our opium episode in the 1800s. There's growing concern about the of course the moral and social effects of just drunkenness as well as Some early idea of alcohol is negative impact on your body, you know liver disease and we didn't you know Understand all of the physiology behind it But we knew that alcohol was doing something to people to hurt at the very least I imagine people were getting jaundiced and that was you know Indicating that something was going on exactly and it took us a while to to understand that, you know, indicating that something was going on. Exactly, and it took us a while to understand that, you know, the people's liver's going
Starting point is 00:20:49 bad, had something to do with the alcohol, but we finally kind of got the picture. And by 1916, the AMA started to refute any of the medical claims of alcohol saying, look, you know, alcohol is not a medicine. It probably shouldn't be prescribed. We don't really see any medical benefits at this point. It does a lot of harm. But this didn't, of course, convinced most patients.
Starting point is 00:21:14 Right. And many doctors still refuse to believe. They'll stop believing, guys. When prohibition became law in this country in 1920, there were a lot of physicians who, you know, okay, they were still allowed to prescribe a certain amount of liquor. Okay, you could prescribe medicinal whiskey, medicinal brandy, and medicinal bitters. Okay. But you could not prescribe beer. Why is that Sydney? Because it was not seen as having any medicinal
Starting point is 00:21:41 value. And the AMA had said as much, you know, you can't be or just, it's not good for you as was the opinion. Right. So there was a movement of a lot of physicians, but probably more so than the physicians, it was a lot of brewers and a lot of drinkers who argued that there were people suffering and maybe even dying from their inability to obtain beer from their physicians. Oh, such a tragic situation that people all over the country find themselves in. They are dying because they can't get their brew on. Exactly. So, they all banded together and started to pressure the government and...
Starting point is 00:22:21 I bet those meetings are pretty cool, huh? I bet those are some cool organizational meetings they had. Guys, how can we get beer back? I really miss beer. Miss beer. Does it help anybody with anything? Does beer do anything good? And there were a lot of,
Starting point is 00:22:37 and I think we talked about this before, there were a lot of alcohols in the patent medicine episode that were created specifically at this time to try to skirt the prohibition laws. Like, hey, if you take this, we talked about Jamaican ginger, which was... That should get the Jake leg, right? That's how you got Jake leg, which was a neurological condition you developed from some of the other stuff they used to make this alcohol-based fake medicine. But there were a lot of things that were created to kind of skirt the laws, but nobody could figure out how do we get beer to people without
Starting point is 00:23:08 just saying, hey, your doctor can prescribe you beer. Right. So in 1921, the attorney general was a Mitchell Palmer, and he had actually been criticized a lot because he had a lot of, he was seen as an attorney general who didn't really believe in personal freedom, and he'd done a lot to kind of investigate people for, you know, coer activities and especially in regards to the prohibition and stuff. And so he wasn't well liked, and he was being lobbied heavily by this group to allow doctors to prescribe beer if they wanted to. And he said, fine, fine.
Starting point is 00:23:43 You know what? Prohibition doesn't extend to that. If a doctor wants to prescribe beer, they can. Not only can they, they can prescribe it as much and as often as they want, for whatever they want. And drugists can make it and sell it. And it can be sold at drugstore soda fountains next to soda. Wink, wink. You know, it's funny though. There's, I think you could probably, if you were of a mind, draw some parallels between this situation
Starting point is 00:24:12 and the use of like medical marijuana. Like I think there's some pretty obvious parallels between the two. I think you can see a lot of parallels between these. And I think this was just the final like, we don't really know what to do with it. We don't know about the evidence, but there's a doctor saying like hey, I want to prescribe my patients beer Sorry Charlie wants some too. Yeah, so so I should be allowed to prescribe my patients beer and the attorney general said
Starting point is 00:24:36 I don't care whatever everybody hates me. I'm I'm just sick of taking all this crap I'm flipping everybody the double bird and going out in style. This was actually right before he left. Awesome. What a rock and roll final act. I really like the next day in the New York Times, the headline was, Brewers Jubilant over Medical Beer. And that was probably the main pressure behind this. It's funny if you look at quotes from the medical societies at the time.
Starting point is 00:25:04 The doctors were all like, we really don't feel that we need to prescribe beer. We're not really that consented. I mean, there were a handful of doctors, and there's probably like drinking. There's one doctor in the corner who's like, I'm in, come on down. Well, and I think you compared it to medical marijuana.
Starting point is 00:25:21 I think a lot of us feel that way about the medical marijuana. I don't know. I mean, If we want to study it and then someday make it legal for me to prescribe it, that's fine I'm not in a hurry to have something else that I'm gonna have a lot of patients asking me for all the time Yeah, this already a lot of hot commodities over there right now There's already a lot of discussions about, you know opiates and about I mean, there's already a lot of discussions about, you know,
Starting point is 00:25:47 opiates and about Benzo's and I don't know that, you know, doctors of the time were probably like, really, now I'm going to have like a really busy schedule with guys going, I just, I think I need beer. I think you need to prescribe me beer. Doc, I got fever. So because you could prescribe people as much beer as you wanted for literally anything. Congress freaked out. And over the next couple months, they got together and started writing legislation to stop this. And it was not more than a few months later that they passed what was known
Starting point is 00:26:16 as the emergency beer bill. Emergency beer as in we need to stop beer. This is our emergency stop beer bill not like a Bill to create a strategic reserve Emergency beer in case of national emergency and need a national hang if we ever should need to hang as a nation We have a strategic beer reserve. That's not what is happening here If you want to know the strategic beer reserve was me figuring out how to make my own beer just in case, because you never know. You never know. Big brother is watching and he might take my beer away. Yeah, you can't be too cautious.
Starting point is 00:26:50 So they refined the attorney general's ruling with this bill that said, okay, yes, you can prescribe alcohol, but only a half pint every 10 days and only liquor, specifically whiskey and brandy, no beer. Medisinal beer is out. So medicinal beer was out. What a great few weeks though. Yeah, so for a few months, your doctor could not only prescribe you beer, they could prescribe you as much beer
Starting point is 00:27:14 as they wanted, and can you imagine like at the drug store? Like I mean, I know we don't have like a lot of soda fountains, drug store soda fountains now, but there would be like, can I have like a, what are those things called that kids would order with the ice cream and the- Oh, like a phosphate? Yeah, or like a phosphate or like a cow or something.
Starting point is 00:27:35 A cow? No. Why doesn't it make the milk, eh? The black and white. Why? What? It was like chocolate and vanilla. An egg cream?
Starting point is 00:27:44 No, I don't know. Okay I'm just making things up anyway go order your weird your weird ice cream soda beverage and also There's a guy next to you just chugging the medical beer I wonder if they had a hard time spooling production back up like because I I'm sure the commercial beer industry had kind of slowed down Well, it had and then then the medical beer was their savior. That was the thing, was the breweries were mainly behind this movement. Printed red crosses on all the cans and that for it.
Starting point is 00:28:13 Well, they talked about, like, what is gonna happen now is that all the soda fountains are gonna become bars, because they can serve beer, and I mean, I would imagine you make more money off selling beer than you do selling phosphates. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. One would think.
Starting point is 00:28:27 Not sure what the profit margin is almost. Soon after this, in the 1930s, this was actually when Guinness used to use the slogan Guinness is good for you. That was when they had to stop doing that. Yeah. Because, you know, medicinal beer had been debunked. Socially good for you, maybe. Yeah. But not so much like good for you.
Starting point is 00:28:47 Right. By the 1940s, we really understood the dangerous effects of alcohol and the idea that there really weren't health benefits, whether you were just taking alcohol containing medicines or giving people IV brandy, there really was no good reason to do it. It was a fun thing. And it wasn't until the 40s that we people IV brandy. There really was no good reason to do it. It was a fun thing.
Starting point is 00:29:07 And it wasn't until the 40s that we finally took brandy and whiskey out of the US pharmacopia. Oh really? Yeah. And so after that, since then we now know that alcohol for the most part is just for funsies. Yeah. There is some evidence, and I'm sure everybody right now
Starting point is 00:29:23 was going, but wait, I thought I saw that article on CNN that said the Alkalus-good for you now. Red wine, red wine, yeah. There is some evidence that maybe some moderate, you know, mild to moderate alcohol consumption could have some long-term health benefits for you. The big difference is that you don't want to take alcohol to fix something that's going, you know, if you have pneumonia, you don't need to take some alcohol for it. Contrary to a lot of, when we talked about Appalachian folk medicine, you don't need to drink whiskey to get rid of well-inni problem that you have. Right.
Starting point is 00:29:56 Although it'll make you forget about them. So maybe, maybe there's some long-term health benefits, I don't know. Preventative, it's not a cure, but maybe a preventative. Maybe. And even that, you know, at this point, I don't encourage people who don't drink to start drinking for that reason. Yes. I would say that if you do drink, drink in moderation, drinking a lot is definitely dangerous to your health. Obviously, we know about liver disease and cirrhosis, but it also makes you a really bad driver. Yeah. Don't do that. And sometimes you're really no fun at parties
Starting point is 00:30:29 after too much. You can know, you know, this is going to be news to you, but you can overdo it on our call. So I think it's like, I saw somebody in when I was reading about this medical beer act, someone said that most important thing to remember is the dose makes the poison. And I think that's the most important thing to remember with alcohol. It's really the amount that you're drinking that decides if it's an okay thing to have in your life or not. So play it safe. So over this New Year's holiday, be careful, have a designated driver who doesn't drink
Starting point is 00:30:59 anything. And take it easy. And take it easy. You know, it's okay to have a couple losses of champagne and enjoy yourself, but I mean, why ruin New Year's Day when you're going to eat all that cabbage? That is not a thing. That is. You eat cabbage, or even cabbage on New Year's Day.
Starting point is 00:31:17 Folks, thank you so much for listening to our program with our special bonus guest, our baby, who's attempting to eat her hand at the moment. Thanks to the Maxime Fund Network for having us as part of the family. Ton of great shows on there, destination DIY, baby geniuses, is a funny one. Jordan Jesse Go, Judge John Hodgkin, all those classics. My brother, my brother.
Starting point is 00:31:44 Oh, thank you, dear. I appreciate that. That's comedy if I show it to my brothers. And there's so much more. So go to maximumfund.org and you can find all of those. Thanks to Harry's response to the show. Thank you to taxpayers for letting us use their song Medicines.
Starting point is 00:31:57 Thanks to everybody supporting our show and sending in suggestions. You can send those to the saw bones show, or or sorry just saw bones at maximumfund.org. You can find our show at sawboneshow.com. And keep sending those suggestions for topics, even if I haven't gotten around to it yet, that doesn't mean I won't. It just means I haven't yet.
Starting point is 00:32:18 Obviously it took me a year to do our call, so. So you never know. And that's going to do it for us until next Tuesday. I'm Justin Macarole. I'm Sydney Macarole. And as always, to do it for us until next Tuesday. I'm Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't draw a hole in your head. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole.
Starting point is 00:32:29 And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole.
Starting point is 00:32:37 And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. And it's going to be a hole. Alright!
Starting point is 00:32:47 Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture Artistone Listener Supported

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