Never Mind Aspirin; Take This

While Colonial Americans of the eighteenth century were busy writing a Constitution and setting up the structures of a new government, they drank wine liberally as part of a healthy lifestyle. Folk medicine pamphlets of the time suggest wine and herb “wine tonics” as remedies for everything from a cold to injuries inflicted by witchcraft.  One of the most influential health writers of the time, Christopher Sauer, a Pennsylvania apothecary, suggested that wine possessed “the noble capacity to warm the stomach, promote digestion, increase and improve the blood, promote circulation, strengthen the constitution and make men merry.”  Sauer recommended one small glass of wine each day—before breakfast.