A brief history of the hangover and its cures – from cabbages to cloves and the lungs of a goat

Anyone who has ever woken up with a hangover will recognise its physical and psychological effects: headache, nausea, self-loathing, regret, and perhaps even some shame at the uninhibited behaviour that accompanied the intoxication. In these days of smartphones, any shame experienced by the foggy memory of drunken behaviour the night before is invariably worse when there is photographic evidence online forever for all to see and judge. The old adage that the best thing for a hangover is not drinking too much alcohol the night before is of little help to the afflicted. Drinking to excess has a long cultural pedigree. In Plato’s Symposium (circa 385-370 BC), which documents a drinking party where guests debate the nature of love, the disruptive drunkenness of the gatecrasher Alcibiades contrasts with Socrates’ capacity to drink to excess while staying sober and avoiding a hangover. Three Monks at Mealtime by Eduard von Grützner (1885). Koller Worshippers of the Greek god of wine Dionysus, meanwhile, advocated intoxication as a means of reaching a state of transcendence. For example, in an ancient Greek collection of hymns addressed to various gods and attributed to the mythical poet Orpheus, Orphic Hymn 29 calls upon Dionysus to “give me in blameless plenty to rejoice”. The Greeks and the Romans believed that it was dangerous and barbaric to drink wine undiluted. The ancient historian Herodotus wrote that Cleomenes I, the king of Sparta, went mad from drinking undiluted wine with Scythians – the much-feared and reputedly savage nomadic warrior tribes that originally hailed from ancient Siberia. The Drunkenness of Noah by Giovanni Bellini (1515). Museum of Fine Arts and Archeology, France The Biblical Noah gets drunk on wine from the vineyard he planted after being spared from the flood. He is discovered lying in a drunken stupor in his tent by his son Ham, who promptly reports this to Noah’s other sons, his brothers Shem and Japhet. These two brothers cover Noah without looking at his nakedness. When Noah wakes up “and knew what his younger son had done unto him”, he curses Ham’s offspring. Biblical scholars have interpreted Ham’s action (what he “did” to Noah) variously as voyeurism, castration or incestuous rape. According to researchers John Sietze Bergsma and Scott Walker Hahn, it’s specifically maternal incest since elsewhere in the Bible the nakedness of the father is synonymous with that of the mother. Lot and His Daughters by Lucas Cranach the elder (1530). Compton Verney Of course none of this explains why Noah feels blameless for getting drunk in the first place. The same question applies later in Genesis when Lot twice becomes so drunk that his daughters have sex with him on consecutive nights, and apparently without his knowledge, so that they might bear children. We are not told whether Noah or Lot are suffering from a hangover – although Noah’s irascibility certainly suggests one. Christianity retained the ancients’ endorsement of moderate drinking, and made drunken loss of control into the sin of gluttony. Until the Reformation, wine remained special in medieval mainland Europe and Britain: transformed into the blood of Christ consumed by the priest as part of the Eucharistic offering and also a mark of secular rank. Only the rich could afford to get drunk on wine. Although there were warnings in early modern English guides to living well about the health dangers of drinking too much wine, it was generally strong beer and ale – the cheaper tipples of the poor – that were blamed by the authorities for drunkenness and anti-social behaviour. In medieval and early modern England, the ale-house was considered a den of iniquity, as is clear from William Langland’s 14th-century poem, Piers Plowman. The poem tells how the character of Gluttony is waylaid on his way to church by Betty the Brewster. A Drunken Peasant Pushed into a Pigsty by Johan Wierix (1568). Ashmolean Museum, Oxford In the 16th-century guide A Compendious Regiment, or A Dietary of Health, author Andrew Boorde describes the effects of drunkenness, where “the wits or senses be dull … the appetite is withdrawn; the head is light, and doth ache”. He is apparently referring to the effects of drinking too much ale or beer since he mentions “the malt worm [that] playeth the devil so fast in the head that all the world runneth round about on wheels”. The malt worm was a weevil that infested malt used in brewing and also a term used to describe a heavy drinker. Hangover cures Might our ancestors help today’s drinker cure a hangover? Then as now, the emphasis was mainly on prevention. Boorde and his peers looked to the ancients to help forestall the unpleasant effects of excessive drinking. Classical authorities were regularly cited as recommending the consumption of certain foods before a drinking session, with almonds, cabbage, baked quinces, wormwood (absinthe) and even the lungs of a goat being thought beneficial. Boors Carousing, Dutch School (circa 17th century). York Museums Trust They had tips on how to feel better after a surfeit of food and drink. Dietary authors recommended the benefits of moderate exercise, specifically walking, and sleep, with purging by vomit as a last resort. Does modern science offer any hope of a reliable hangover cure? A recent paper in the journal Addiction found that the drugs tolfenamic acid and pyritinol, and the more readily available clove extract, all “merit further study”, although this is based on “very low quality evidence”. The medieval dietary authors had praised cloves as restorative and good for stomach trouble. But perhaps any notion of a “cure” for a hangover is based upon the questionable premise that one can undo the self-induced damage to body and mind caused by a bout of heavy drinking. In his entertaining book On Drink, first published in 1972, Kingsley Amis devotes a whole chapter to the hangover, referring to its physical and metaphysical (emotional, psychological) symptoms. Amis offered advice on treating a metaphysical hangover with “hangover reading” and “hangover listening”: books and music that would induce a specific state of mind. He thought that “you must feel worse emotionally before you start to feel better”. Experiencing rather than masking a hangover is essential to expiate the “sin” of excessive indulgence. This is not so far from the medieval ideal of mortification.