Thus the British Medical Journal felt that Victorian Vineyards’ “brandy is a pure product and well worthy of the attention of the profession”11 and that “no other kind of brandy corresponds better to medical necessities than pure grape brandy. The “pure grape brandy” which Messrs. Canton and Co. … have sent to us is correctly so described…”.12 During the prohibition era when alcoholic drinks were banned in the USA from 1919, physicians lobbied strongly

for the right to prescribe alcohol and a US survey in 1921 showed that 51% of physicians advocated Proteasome inhibitor prescribing whiskey and 26% believed that beer was “a necessary therapeutic agent.13 At St. Bartholomew’s hospital feeding cups were kept on the anaesthetic trolleys CB-839 for the administration of brandy in an anaesthetic emergency and these were still there as late as 196314 though brandy had not been administered in living memory.15 The aim of this paper is to briefly describe the medical use of brandy and other forms of alcohol in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I do not describe the social use

(and misuse) of alcohol. Alcohol has been both consumed as a beverage and used in medicine since time immemorial but by the end of the 19th century medicine had developed a scientific basis16 and although alcohol was not being used nearly as much as in earlier times, it still had an important role. There was a wide spectrum of views on its use in medicine. At one extreme were those who felt that as alcohol was a stimulant, it should be beneficial in all disease states. Wilkes quotes a London doctor who “gave brandy to all his cases, for he found all the Bermondsey people weak and required it”.17 At the

other extreme was the temperance movement. Alcohol abuse caused (as it still causes) major medical and social problems and the prescribing habits of doctors, such as the one quoted above, were thought to contribute to this. In 1871 a statement from the British Medical Temperance Society said: “As it is believed that the inconsiderate prescription of large quantities of alcoholic liquids by medical men for their patients has given rise, in many instances, to the formation of intemperate habits, the undersigned, very while unable to abandon the use of alcohol in the treatment of certain cases of disease, are yet of opinion that no medical practitioner should prescribe it without a sense of grave responsibility. They believe that alcohol, in whatever form, should be prescribed with as much care as any powerful drug, and that the directions for its use should be so framed as not to be interpreted as a sanction for excess, or necessary for the continuance of its use when the occasion is past”.18 The London Temperance Hospital (founded in 1873) discouraged the use of alcohol but did not forbid it. However they questioned its value.