Health

In the history of mankind, the regular consumption of alcohol is directly linked to cultivated agriculture, when people began to deliberately brew beer-like drinks from grain between 6,000 and 8,000 years ago. People had already experienced this more or less by chance when fruit began to ferment in the first primitive vessels and the resulting alcoholic drinks were consumed. Soon these were also used for soothing or healing purposes, because various positive effects were recognised by chance, but of course their cause could not be interpreted. This is attested to in many ancient writings, including the Bible.

Wine as a medicine

The Jewish Talmud says (Rabbi Banal): "Where there is a lack of wine, medicine is needed". For the Greek physician Hippocrates (460-377 BC), wine played a role in almost all of his remedies. He prescribed it for cooling fevers, as a diuretic, as a tonic for convalescents and as a painkiller and sedative. The Romans utilised the effectiveness of wine as an antibiotic, as soldiers were given water mixed with wine (or vinegar) during conquests. In some ancient cultures, alcohol consumption and even intoxication was also used as a means of communication. During the exuberant celebrations in honour of Dionysus, the god of wine, in ancient Greece, intoxication was regarded as a purifying ceremony with a psycho-hygienic effect.