Binge Drinking 700 Years Ago
There are several groups out there that I tend to refer to as the “New Prohibitionists”. They would have you believe that alcohol is a new and evil ‘drug’ that is the bane of modern society. Well, for those that want to know the whole story, there are plenty of articles out there that illustrate the history of different brews and alcohol in general.I came across one particularly interesting article today that describes some artifacts in London, England. The researchers involved described these items as 12th century drinking vessels and goes on to paint a picture of what things were like back then. It would seem that looking back only 700 years or so, the town of England had more than 1300 Ale Houses – which equates to just about 1 Ale House for every 50 people in the city at that time. Imagine if that ratio was the same today. Hehee…
Apparently, the water was so bad that brewing ale made it much safer to drink as the boiling and the alcohol killed off some of the bugs that lived in the water back then. Everyone drank it – including children – starting at breakfast time and got through as much as a gallon of the stuff each day. Since the price was only about a penny per gallon, only the poorest were forced to drink the water.
Ahh… the good old days.
Source
posted by Bonzai @ 7:54 PM
1 Comments:
It wasn't such a big deal back then, since no one drove a car. Horses knew how to get home, even with a drunk driver. And cirrhosis didn't seem a big danger when the average life span was about 40 years anyway!
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