Question

[mightymads]

Victorian remedies for hangover? Especially in the rural area? (Not beer XD) Anyone help?

Comments

[rachelindeed]

When looking for some specific bit of detailed period info like this, usually the first site I try is the Hathitrust Digital Library. They have a very wide-ranging collection of digitized ephemera and an excellent text search engine. For this query, I entered the search phrase "hair of the dog" recipe, selected Great Britain as the place of publication, and set the time of publication as the 1890s. The first result that looks promising is Edward Spencer's 1897 book Cakes & ale: a memory of many meals, the whole interspersed with various recipes, more or less original, and anecdotes, mainly veracious.

The book has a chapter devoted entirely to 'pick-me-ups'; it's titled "Restoratives" and at a glance appears to include a number of suggested recipes intermixed with a lot of slang and tongue-in-cheek anecdotes. You may find something useful in this chapter, and if not, the slang may help you hone in on more specific search terms to use. "Livener," for example, looks like it may have been a common term meaning 'hangover remedy.'

Here's the link to the first page of the chapter: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433006644474?urlappend=%3Bseq=287

[mightymads]

Thank you so much!

[sanguinity]

I hope it's not weird to say that whenever you make a post/comment like this I get a research-crush on you this big. :-)

[rachelindeed]

LOL, thank you! :)