“Alcohol as a Remedy: from Ancient Amphorae to Prohibition-Era Pharmacies”
🍷🌿 Part 6: Medicinal Wines
“When wine was part of the medicine chest — equal to herbs and infusions”
❤️🩹 I. Wine as Medicine
Until the 19th century, wine was not regarded as a beverage at all — it was a remedy.
A physician or an apothecary of the Renaissance would keep it on the same shelf as vials, tinctures, and ointments. In medical treatises of the 16th to 18th centuries, alongside lists of herbs — chamomile, myrrh, wormwood — one invariably finds the word vinum.
Wine was perceived as a “warm liquid” (liquor calidus), capable of driving out “cold” diseases, restoring strength, and balancing the so-called bodily humors (humores).
According to the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen, human health depended on the harmony of four inner fluids — blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.
→ “Cold wines” (such as light whites) were prescribed for people of hot temperament and fiery nature;
→ “Warm wines” (red, aged, sweet) were recommended to those suffering from inner chill, weakness, melancholy, or old age.
“Wine warms the soul, purifies the spirit, and quickens the blood”, —
wrote 17th-century doctors in the university manuals of Montpellier and Padua.
Wine was prescribed after bloodletting, surgery, difficult childbirths, colds, or plague — as a restorative elixir.
In the monastic pharmacies of Burgundy and southern Italy, monks prepared special vins cordiaux — “wines for the heart,” infused with herbs, myrrh, saffron, and cinnamon.
Each monastery had its own recipe, yet the principle was always the same:
wine was not merely a medicine, but a medium — a carrier of the virtues and the vital power of plants.
🩺 II. Where Did Humanity’s Faith in Wine’s Healing Power Come From?
The belief in wine as a medicine did not arise suddenly — neither in monasteries nor at the court of Louis XIV.
It was the result of a long accumulation of experience, an almost instinctive knowledge that humankind developed over centuries, long before the birth of chemistry, microbiology, or the microscope.
How the Healing Experience of Wine Was Born
► Observation through everyday life.
People drank wine not only on holidays but daily — because it was a safe liquid.
Pure water was rare in the ancient and medieval world, while wine, thanks to its alcohol and acidity, possessed a natural antiseptic effect.
It was noticed that those who drank wine fell ill less often.
Thus, wine gradually entered the category of “healthy habits,” long before the concept of prevention appeared.
Without knowing about microbes, people saw the result: wine protects.
► The experience of soldiers and pilgrims.
In ancient legions, crusades, and sea expeditions, the same pattern emerged: those who had a supply of wine or vinegar survived more often.
Commanders ordered the distribution of posca — a weak wine diluted with water.
It quenched thirst and prevented dysentery.
From this came the conviction: if wine purifies water, it must purify the body as well.
“Monastic infirmary: brothers watching over a patient being given a cup of warm wine — the elixir vitae of medieval medicine”
► Monastic medicine and the observation of monks.
In the Middle Ages, monasteries became natural laboratories.
Monks observed that patients given a little warm wine with herbs recovered faster.
Such cases, copied for centuries in apothecaries’ books, formed a corpus of practical rather than theoretical knowledge.
Thus appeared the term vinum medicatum — “wine animated by medicine.”
“Vinum medicatum: a 16th-century monastic pharmacy”
► Alchemy and the idea of ‘vital heat.’
In the age of alchemists and natural philosophers, it was believed that wine held within itself the spirit of the sun — condensed warmth.
It “revived the life force,” especially in the elderly and the melancholic.
In 15th–16th-century treatises one reads:
“He who drinks wine in moderation preserves harmony among the elements within his body”
► Transmission of knowledge across generations.
Recipes were passed orally — from winemakers to priests, from healers to peasants, from wise women to their descendants.
Each added something of their own: a herb, a spice, a proportion, a prayer.
Over time, these customs formed a kind of popular pharmacopoeia of wine — a stable system of belief that wine not only warmed but healed.
“Even before wine became an object of worship, it became an object of trust”
► Wine as an object of trust.
For centuries, people turned to wine not only as a drink but as a witness of hope.
When science knew nothing of microbes, chemistry, or vitamins, belief in the healing power of wine was less a delusion than an act of trust in the surrounding world — in the warmth of the sun, the kindness of the earth, and the wisdom of ancestors.
To drink wine for healing meant to trust the laws of life itself — to believe that nature contained no evil, that everything was arranged to prolong existence, and that illness was merely a temporary disturbance in the harmony of the elements.
This ancient faith in liquid goodness curiously echoes the modern faith in art, beauty, and even illusion — for humanity seeks not so much truth as consolation.
Between the apothecary’s goblet of the 17th century and the champagne flute of the 21st stretches a delicate thread of the same conviction:
a sip can restore equilibrium — to the body, to the spirit, or to meaning.
⚖️ The Negative Consequences
Ancient and medieval physicians, though unaware of the chemistry of alcohol, clearly saw both its benefits and its darker side.
They noticed that wine could “restore the strength” of the sick, improve appetite, ease pain, and calm fear.
But they also observed its reverse effect — intoxication, irritability, weakness after excess.
For them, however, this was not “harm” in the modern sense, but disharmony, a violation of balance.
Their way of thinking was not analytical but harmonizing.
They did not divide substances into “medicines” and “poisons” as we do today — everything depended on the dose, the context, and the balance of forces within the body.
They did not say “ethanol destroys cells,” but rather, “the warmth of wine dries out the blood.”
Thus, they believed: evil lies not in the substance itself but in the disruption of proportion.
Later, Paracelsus would express this idea in his immortal formula:
“All things are poison, and nothing is without toxicity; only the dose makes a thing not a poison”
So even as they observed the harmful effects of excess, physicians did not turn away from wine.
On the contrary, they viewed it as a universal remedy demanding caution and respect.
For them, alcohol was like fire: it warms, but it can also burn — not an enemy, but a force requiring skilled handling.
👑 III. Royal Medicinal Wines
The monarchs of Europe possessed everything that medicine of their time could offer —
court physicians, alchemists, apothecaries, herbalists, even private laboratories.
Yet despite all this abundance, no royal prescription was ever complete without wine.
For the rulers of the 17th and 18th centuries, wine was not merely a pleasure but part of a health regimen approved by their doctors.
Court physicians believed that wine contained an inner fire — the “spirit of the sun” — sustaining the body’s and mind’s vitality.
They saw it not as an enemy of sobriety but as an ally of longevity — a universal antiseptic, stimulant, and tonic.
Kings drank wine not out of whim, but by prescription.
Thus arose the expression vin ordonné — “prescribed wine,” found in the court archives of France, England, and Austria.
Their obedience to such prescriptions reflected the medical ethics of the age:
to heal the sovereign, one had to “restore his natural warmth.”
“A king must be not only wise but warm-blooded,”
wrote in 1693 the royal physician Guy-Crescent Fagon in one of his reports to Versailles.
Doctor Fagon and the Royal Goblet of Health
At the heart of Versailles, amid mirrors and silk, stood a chamber contemporaries called the pharmacy of majesty.
There, Guy-Crescent Fagon, chief physician to Louis XIV, composed prescriptions blending medicine, alchemy, and faith.
He was not merely a healer, but an architect of royal health — for the king’s well-being was a matter of state importance.
From the late 17th century, Fagon began prescribing Burgundy wine to the monarch,
convinced that it strengthened the heart, purified the blood, and inspired the spirit.
Burgundy already enjoyed a reputation as a “warm wine” — a drink born under benevolent sun — in contrast to the “cold and damp” Bordeaux wines, which, according to physicians, brought melancholy and weakness.
Fagon recommended small doses: un verre à midi, un à soir — one glass at noon with dinner, another in the evening for relaxation and digestion — and strictly forbade iced water or raw fruit, which he considered sources of inner chill.
It was, in essence, a royal prescription in which wine ceased to be a drink and became a medicine, taken according to schedule.
Thus emerged a kind of regal vinothérapeutique regimen — wine therapy elevated to a medical procedure.
Court records preserve the formula:
“Le vin de Bourgogne fortifie le sang, échauffe la poitrine et donne vigueur à l’esprit du Roi.” (“Burgundy wine strengthens the blood, warms the chest, and gives vigor to the King’s spirit.”)
Wine was served not in an ordinary goblet but in a porcelain cup with a lid —
to preserve its aroma and shield it from the “harmful influence of air.”
This attitude bordered on the sacred: the king did not merely drink; he received a medicine sustaining his vital aura.
With time, Burgundy became part of the court’s daily diet.
Even in old age, when Louis suffered from gout and pain, wine was not excluded —
only the dose reduced, so as “not to extinguish the inner fire, but to keep it in gentle warmth.”
Thus French medicine adopted a formula that endured through much of the 18th century:
wine was not a vice, but an element of the monarch’s physiological balance
📜 “Ordonnance de 1693” — The King’s Wine Prescription
Among the court papers of Versailles, there survives a document bearing a dry, almost pharmaceutical title:
“Ordonnance de 1693 pour la santé du Roi” — The 1693 Ordinance for the King’s Health.
It represents a remarkable blend of medical report, court etiquette, and prayer for the monarch’s longevity.
The text details Louis XIV’s daily routine — the timing of his baths, hours of rest, length of walks, and even the exact number of wine glasses prescribed by his physician, Guy-Crescent Fagon.
It states plainly:
“Sa Majesté prendra un verre de vin de Bourgogne après le repas de midi, et un autre après le souper; l’eau sera bannie des boissons ordinaires.”
(“His Majesty shall take one glass of Burgundy wine after the midday meal and another after supper; water shall be excluded from ordinary drinks.”)
Such dry, almost bookkeeping phrasing is striking in its solemn seriousness.
To the doctors of that era, wine was not an indulgence but a necessary component of bodily harmony — no less vital than sleep or morning walks.
This “wine ordinance” was no royal whim. It summarized decades of careful observation by the physicians of the French court, who believed that royal health depended not only on purges and leeches but on maintaining the right warmth — that inner fire which Burgundy, they thought, kept alive.
“Louis XIV and Doctor Fagon: a courtly ceremony of health — the King is served a cup of ‘medicinal wine’ according to the Ordonnance de 1693”
Ironically, Fagon himself suffered from a weak heart, yet he believed in wine with the fervor of a monk in miracles.
He was convinced that each sip of Burgundy prolonged the King’s life by at least a day;
his medical practice was, in essence, a daily act of faith in wine.
“O Burgundy, — wrote one court chronicler, — thou hast become the new holy water of France — the blessing of the King and the justification of his physicians.”
🍯 Tokay — The Eastern Elixir
If Burgundy symbolized the inner warmth of the French body, Hungarian Tokay was seen as the wine that revived the breath of the soul.
It was called vin des faibles estomacs et des cœurs froids —
“the wine for weak stomachs and cold hearts.”
In the second half of the 17th century, when Europe increasingly spoke of “vital forces” and “living fluids,” Tokay entered royal pharmacies as an elixir of noble origin.
Its golden color and honeyed aroma evoked not so much wine as sunlight distilled.
Court physicians — from Paris to St. Petersburg — prescribed it as a cordialum,
a remedy to fortify the heart and lift the spirit.
On the vineyards surrounding Mount Tokaj, grapes were touched by a mysterious “noble rot” — Botrytis cinerea. This gray bloom, drying the berries on the vine, concentrated their sweetness and fragrance beyond compare.
What later came to be called noble rot appeared to 17th- and 18th-century doctors as an alchemical miracle: a transformation in which decay turned into health.
“God grants this mold the power to heal, for it does not destroy but transfigures”, —
wrote one court physician of the Austrian Empire.
It is no wonder Tokay graced the tables of nearly every European monarch.
The French called it vin d’Orient — “Eastern wine,” a remedy out of legend.
Peter the Great ordered it by the crate; Louis XV called it “the wine that smiles even upon the sick.”
By the 1740s, in the apothecary catalogs of Vienna and Prague, Tokay appeared under its own heading — Vinum Tokayense Medicinale.
It was recommended “for weakness, anemia, colds, and lack of joy.”
Medicine of the time made no strict line between body and soul: if Tokay brought back a smile, it was healing.
“It does not so much strengthen the heart, — noted one Hungarian priest, —
as remind it why it beats.”
Thus, at the close of the Baroque era, Tokay became more than a wine — it was a symbol of harmony between science and miracle, an embodiment of faith that nature itself could heal — if one learned to drink its light slowly and with gratitude.
🍷 Fashionable Medicinal Wines of the 18th Century
The 18th century can rightly be called the golden age of wine pharmacology.
European pharmacies no longer sold only herbs and potions — their shelves displayed elegant bottles labeled vin médicinal, vin cordial, vin tonique.
Each wine had its own character and purpose:
Burgundy strengthened the blood, Tokay lifted the mood, and new arrivals — Madeira, Rhine wine, Port — expanded the catalogue of elixirs.
⛵ Madeira — The Medicine of Sailors and Centenarian Lords
On the island of Madeira, people noticed that wine surviving a long sea voyage became richer, denser, and more “sun-soaked.”
From this observation was born the idea that Madeira carried the strength of the tropics
and could restore vitality.
It was prescribed for “fatigue of the blood” and “melancholy of the spirit.”
English doctors of the 18th century advised the elderly to take one glass a day,
declaring:
“Madeira rekindles the inner flame of those whose years are many, yet whose hearts grow cold.”
No wonder Sir Winston Churchill would later call it “the elixir of patience” —
a drink that grants the strength to endure, to wait, and to bear life calmly.
🏞️ Rhine Wine — The Morning Medicine of Melancholics
Rhine wines, light and mineral, were thought to purify the body: they “disperse thick blood, improve mood, and clear the mind.”
In late 18th-century German medical treatises, one finds the term Reinwein-Therapie — “Rhine-wine therapy.”
It was the wine of Protestant moderation, opposed to French opulence. Doctors prescribed it “for those who think too much and laugh too little.”
Viennese physicians recommended taking Rhine wine on an empty stomach — in the morning — “two fingers’ width diluted with water.”
It was a kind of Enlightenment-era vitamin tonic.
🏰 Port — A Fortress for the Heart
In Portugal’s hot climate, where medicine drew from English practice, port wine was used against exhaustion, loss of appetite, and faintness of the heart. It was known as vin de convalescence — “the wine of recovery.”
Physicians claimed it “strengthened the cardiac muscle” and cured “fatigue born of prosperity” — what today might be called depression.
Even in the hospitals of London and Lisbon, weakened patients were prescribed
a measure of port — exactly the same dose that, a century earlier in Versailles,
was prescribed to the king.
“A drop of port brings back the will to live,” — wrote London apothecary Howard in 1789.
Thus, by the end of the 18th century, wine had become a universal language of medicine: each variety was a word in the pharmacopoeia, each land of origin a laboratory of taste and faith.
⚗️ VI. Alcohol and Pharmacy in the 18th Century
With the Age of Enlightenment, medicine stepped out of the monasteries and into the cities. Apothecaries became professionals of a new kind — half chemists, half alchemists — and in their laboratories, wine became the principal solvent and vehicle for healing substances.
► Vin médicinal — The Apothecary’s Wine
In the pharmacies of Paris, Vienna, London, and Naples, the same labels could be seen:
Vin médicinal, Vinum ad usum medicum, Vino officinale.
These marked wines intended specifically for medical use — into them, pharmacists dissolved herbs, spices, roots, and minerals, creating tinctures and tonics.
Bottles bearing such inscriptions stood beside jars of quinine, myrrh, and opium —
official medicinal preparations included in pharmacopoeias.
One of the most popular formulas was vin au quinquina — wine with quinine —
used against fevers and weakness. From this recipe would later evolve vermouth, and then tonic water.
But in the 18th century, all this still belonged purely to medicine: the apothecary prescribed the dose in ounces, and the patient received not pleasure, but treatment.
A typical prescription might read:
“Adde vinum album bene clarificatum — quantum sufficit ad dissolvendum medicamentum”
(“Add clarified white wine — as much as is sufficient to dissolve the medicine.”)
► Spirit as the “Soul of the Plant”
Alongside wine, spirit entered pharmacy ever more actively. It was known as spiritus vini — “the spirit of wine,” or purified alcohol.
Physicians regarded it not as poison but as the essence of life extracted through fermentation — a concentrated spark of vitality.
It could preserve and carry the curative power of plants, preventing spoilage —
hence the widespread use of alcohol to infuse bark, roots, and herbs.
Thus appeared the first apothecary tinctures: spiritus lavandulae (spirit of lavender), elixir de menthe (mint elixir), tinctura valerianae (valerian tincture) — all of them, in essence, “wine refined into transparency of spirit.”
Pharmacies smelled of lavender, mint, and valerian root. Each vial contained not only a medicine but a mood — sleep, alertness, or calm — dissolved in wine or strong alcohol.
“An 18th-century apothecary at work: blending an infusion in a flask among bottles labeled Spiritus lavandulae, Elixir de menthe, Tinctura valerianae — the aromas of the Enlightenment.”
► The Medicine of Taste
Eighteenth-century pharmacists insisted that a remedy should not only heal but please the palate. From this idea came the fashion for cordial wines — sweet infusions on quinine, cinnamon, and orange peel.
They were intended not for the gravely ill but for the weary of life —
a medical euphemism of the age of gallantry. Such wines were consumed by prescription and for propriety’s sake — in a society where illness was considered indecent, and mild medication a virtue.
By the century’s end, the apothecary had finally replaced the monk: he mixed, he recorded, he believed in balance — and wine became the sacred intermediary between chemistry and life.
But on the horizon, clouds were gathering: the 19th century was approaching —
the age of laboratories, microscopes, and the first medical scandals, when alcohol would be named, for the first time, the enemy of health.
⚠️ VII. A Change of Paradigm — From Medicine to Poison
This was one of the most dramatic turns in humanity’s relationship with alcohol:
in the span of just one century, wine journeyed from the pharmacy shelf to the pages of police reports.
The 19th century became the era when medicine lost its patience with wine.
What for centuries had been praised as the elixir of life was now condemned as a toxic stimulant, a source of dependency, inflammation, and madness.
The culprit was science itself — precise, passionless, and disillusioning.
🧪 Chemistry versus Poetry
Once physicians had microscopes and the chemical formula of ethanol in their hands,
wine ceased to be the mystical “warm juice of nature.” It became merely a mixture of alcohol, sugar, and organic acids.
The magic was gone — only chemistry remained.
And in that chemistry, doctors discovered an enemy: the same spiritus vini once revered as the spirit of life was now exposed as a toxin, irritating the heart, the liver, and the brain.
“A 19th-century physician in his laboratory: examining wine under a microscope — from poetry to chemistry, from elixir to the strict formula C₂H₆O.”
As early as 1838, the French physiologist Dr. Lecane wrote:
“What was once called an elixir is but a slow-acting poison,
masquerading under a noble taste.”
🧴 From Apothecary to Temperance
By the mid-19th century, medicine began a true reform of taste. From the pages of pharmaceutical manuals disappeared such words as vin médicinal and vin cordial.
In their place appeared tonique sans alcool (“alcohol-free tonic”) and sirop fortifiant (“strength-giving syrup”).
These preparations came in the form of syrups, mixtures, and infusions,
and by the late 1800s, their labels often read:
“Tonique sans alcool — pour enfants et convalescents”
(“Alcohol-free tonic — for children and convalescents”).
It was, in essence, an attempt by medicine to preserve the old idea of liquid health —
but in a new, sober form.
Interestingly, many of these recipes were later reborn through marketing: from the same formulas emerged tonics, lemonades, and colas.
In this sense, the tonique sans alcool was the medical ancestor of Coca-Cola and Schweppes.
💧 “Water Saves, Wine Deceives”
Monastic and urban apothecaries gave way to clinics, sanitary societies, and moral slogans:
“L’eau sauve, le vin trompe” — “Water saves, wine deceives.”
Physicians — especially in England and Scandinavia — began to see alcohol not only
as the cause of disease but as a root of moral decay: crime, poverty, degeneration.
Thus was born the medical temperance movement, in which the bottle was no longer viewed as a source of inspiration or strength but as the origin of all human vices.
🍷 Yet, Faith Remained
And yet even the strictest physicians could not wholly renounce wine. Even after alcohol had been branded an enemy, hospitals still served restorative wine to patients,
arguing that “it sustains the pulse when all else fails.”
In the military hospitals of Napoleon III, and in London’s St. Catherine’s Hospital,
wine remained part of the diet for the wounded and the exhausted — well into the first years of the 20th century.
One French doctor remarked wryly:
— We forbid wine to the healthy, yet we save the dying with it.
Thus, the 19th century did not abolish faith in wine — it merely re-evaluated it.
Wine ceased to be a symbol of harmony and became a moral dilemma:
“Does it save or destroy? Heal or seduce?”
🍇 VIII. Conclusion — The Myth of the “Healing Glass”
More than two centuries have passed, yet faith in wine’s curative power has never truly vanished. It has simply changed its form — from monastic recipes and royal ordinances
to the advice of gastroenterologists and glossy-magazine articles about “the benefits of a glass of red” and the “French paradox.”
Even the most modern research — armed with statistics and electron microscopes —
cannot fully dispel this ancient myth. Human beings still (perhaps naively) wish to believe that there exists a drink capable of healing not only the body but the spirit:
a drink that restores appetite for life, calms the heart, and if it does not prolong the days, at least makes them brighter.
Wine continues to live in human culture on the border between medicine and poetry.
It carries the memory of old physicians who measured health not by laboratory tests but by one’s ability to smile.
And perhaps this is the true essence of its “healing power” — not chemistry, but emotional equilibrium, that same trust which connects a person to the world
through taste, aroma, and remembrance.
From the royal medicine chest to the evening dinner glass — that is the path wine has taken through the centuries, while its meaning remains unchanged:
→ a little warmth,
→ a little faith,
→ and a little consolation.
“The light within the wine reflects the memory of centuries — and that same faith that a single sip can restore harmony.”
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