By the 1930s, governments and medical institutions were turning against whisky and ethyl alcohol. No longer could whisky be classified as therapeutic goods but as a legal class of drugs akin to purine alkaloids in tobacco. Reasons cited were that alcohol causes dependency, harms health and well-being, and even unsettles societal norms.
At the advent of distilled spirits at Italy’s Scholain Europe by the 1700s, medical authorities classified such medicinal elixirs as Spiritus frumenti, the spirit of the grain. Until the 20th century, physicians described spirit – Spiritus vini gallici (hospital brandy) and Spiritus frumenti (whisky) – as ‘heroic medicines’ useful for sterilisation, sedation, preservation, and restoration due to their antiseptic, antibacterial, and anaesthetic benefits.
