“Against Drunkennesse.
“If you would not be drunke, take the powder of Betany and Coleworts mix’t together; and eat it every morning fasting, as much as will lie on a sixpence, and it will preserve a man from drunkennesse.”
But this is an alleged preventive of the act, and not a chaser of sorrow from the brow of the unwise partaker.
“To quicken a man’s wits,” writes the same Mr. Markham, “spirit and memory, let him take Langdebeefe”—can this mean langue de bœuf?—“which is gathered in June or July, and beating it in a cleane mortar; Let him drinke the juyce thereof with warme water, and he shall finde the benefit.”
Probably the most useful part of this prescription was the warm water; still it can hardly be regarded as a restorative. {203}
Other recipes are before me, for “drawing out bones broken in the head,” and “for the falling of the mould of the head”; but these, apparently, have no concern with the question at issue. But to continue the search—eureka!
“To Cure Spleen or Vapours.
Take an ounce of the filings of steel, two drachms of gentian sliced, half an ounce of carduns seeds bruised, half a handful of centaury tops; infuse all these in a quart of white wine four days, and drink four spoonfuls of the clear every morning, fasting two hours after it, and walking about.”
This I take to be a bona fide pick-me-up of two hundred years ago; and if “carduns” be the old spelling of “cardamom” ’tis very much the same mixture that the chemist will place in the trembling hand of the over-estimator, enquiring at the same time, “Would you like a lozenge after it, sir?” And the omission of sal volatile or chloric ether in the prescription leads to the belief that those drugs were joys unknown to the reveller of the seventeenth century.
The most aggravating part about the aftermath of revelry is that it takes, just as it likes, directly opposite forms. Two sinners may jump the same stiff course—by this sporting metaphor is meant imbibe the same amount and description of alcohol—after dinner, and, whilst A may wake with a double-breasted headache, a taste of sewage in the mouth, and a tongue as foul and furry as a stoat’s back, B will commence the day with a {204} dreadful sinking at the base of the stomach, palpitation of the heart, and a desire to eat anything solid within reach. A prays faintly for burnt brandy, or death, and could not swallow even a devilled biscuit, were you to promise to make him a director of a gold-mine for performing that feat; whilst B is “dead off” brandy, but is capable of washing down ham and eggs and chops unlimited, with a gallon or two of coffee. Any medical man will doubtless give a reason for this discrepancy, which is quite beyond my powers of elucidation.