To Cure All Ills: The remarkable stories behind the invention of all our favourite spirits and cocktails, from the gimlet and scurvy to the corpse reviver and Bubonic Plague

These days the quinine in your G&T may not be necessary to cure malaria and you don’t really need that second Gimlet to prevent a case of scurvy, but until relatively recently, our drinks were also our medicines. This intoxicating and eclectic history of cocktails infuses all our favourite drinks with spirited history.

Early on, alcohol and medicine were interchangeable: Distilled spirits were called ‘eau de vie’, meaning ‘water of life’, speaking to their healing (or at least, invigorating) powers. Until modern sanitation, alcoholic beverages were usually safer to drink than water, and low-ABV beer was served to factory workers for hydration the way Gatorade is to football players today. Not only is alcohol a disinfectant (whiskey would both numb the pain and sterilise the wound), it is a preservative, employed to extend the useful life of medicinal herbs throughout the year, and mixers bring additional benefits to cocktails.

In this quirky and comprehensive history, Camper English explores the anti-malarial properties of tonic and the bubonic plague-fighting juniper in gin; how sarsaparilla in root beer was used to ward off syphilis; and the legend that the wormwood in vermouth is named for its ability to fight tapeworm and the like. He traces the medicinal origins of so many of today’s drinks and finds numerous fascinating histories, stretching back to ancient Greece and Rome, the Islamic golden age and the European renaissance, all begging to be told.