From Smithsonian: beer, just what the doctor ordered

Modern Brewery Age, May 9, 2005

In 1758, young George Washington decided to seek a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses. He had been stymied in an earlier bid, he believed, by one crucial error: he had not "treated" the voters properly--which is to say, he had not provided them with sufficient alcoholic refreshment.

This time, determined to correct his ways, he purchased some 144 gallons of wine, rum, hard cider, punch and beer for distribution to supporters. At more than two votes per gallon, Washington's effort proved successful, launching a rather distinguished career in American politics.

More than a century and a half later, after the American temperance movement had finally won its fight to prohibit alcohol, a considerable percentage of the nation's populace remained staunchly faithful to the founders' tradition, using their ingenuity to acquire any and all available alcohol. And in the early months of 1921, a dedicated group of brewers, physicians and imbibers attempted to convince the U.S. Congress that beer was nothing less than vital medicine.

Whatever craven thirsts might have inspired its advocates, the right of physicians to prescribe "medical beer" was the subject of intense national debate.

Smithsonian magazine found that the arguments had less to do with the number of likely prescriptions than with the long-term implications of legalizing the consumption of beer. It was what politicians today call a wedge issue: unimportant, even ridiculous, in itself, but with potentially vast legal and cultural consequences.

Temperance advocates denounced the medical beer" campaign as an attempt to play fast and loose with the law--an effort, they said, that could lead only to "chaos" and "Bolshevism."

Prohibition's opponents, by contrast, urged the measure as nothing less than a matter of life and death.

The idea of alcohol as medicine was not new. As historian W. J. Rorabaugh wrote, Americans in the early 18th century classified whiskey, rum and other liquors as medications that could cure colds, fevers, snakebites, frosted toes, and broken legs, and as relaxants that would relieve depression, reduce tension, and enable hardworking laborers to enjoy a moment of happy, frivolous camaraderie." But if many doctors conceded the efficacy of hard liquor, the case of beer was rather more controversial.

Beer's champions often pointed to its relaxing qualities, and to its nutritional value. In a lengthy ode to British ale, for instance, one writer suggested that beer was so chock-full of vitamins that it had saved the "British race" from extinction during food-scarce plague years.

The man to whom fate and presidential politics bequeathed the duty of deciding the medical beer question was Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. By the time the beer problem crossed his desk in early 1921, Palmer was under attack from civil libertarians for his harsh deportation campaign against foreign-born Communists and anarchists, known as the "Palmer Raids."

On March 3, 1921, shortly before his last day as attorney general, Palmer issued an opinion declaring that the "beverage" clause of the 18th Amendment entitled doctors to prescribe beer at any time, under any circumstances and in any amount they saw fit. Wholesale druggists could take charge of selling beer. He also suggested that commercial drugstores could sell it from their soda fountains--though "never again beer over the saloon bar or in the hotel dining room."

Beer-makers, unsurprisingly, were sure that Palmer had hit upon a perfect fusion of virtue and science. "Brewers Jubilant over Medical' Beer," The New York Times reported. Doctors as a group seemed to take satisfaction from Palmer's affirmation their authority, seeing in it a victory of science over superstition.

Temperance reformers, by contrast, were furious at Palmer--a first step, as they saw in undermining America's newfound self-control. The Anti-Saloon League, one of the country's leading temperance groups, was particularly incensed at the suggestion that small children, seated cheerily at the neighborhood soda fountain, would be forced to witness beer's sale and consumption.

Had Palmer seen fit to restrict the consumption of medical beer in any way, organizations like the ASL might well have concluded that the handful of resulting prescriptions were not worth the fight. But the vision of giddy brewers reopening factories to produce millions of gallons of beer seemed too great an assault on their recent victory.

Within months of Palmer's decision, Congress had taken up the so-called beer emergency bill, which limited wine and liquor prescriptions to not more than a half pint in 10 days, and banned beer altogether. By the end of November 1921, the bill had become law, putting an end to the strange brew known as medical beer.