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Friday, 3 April 2015

Barks and quacks: London's alcoholic remedies

Volume 376, No. 9757, p1977, 11 December 2010

Perspectives

Barks and quacks: London's alcoholic remedies

Dara Mohammadi
Article has an altmetric score of 1
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(10)62248-9
A few years ago, Ricardo Leizaola, an ethnobotanist, visual anthropologist, and curator of London's Global Bitters Cabinet, returned to his native Venezuela to study how knowledge of plants had been maintained in rural communities that had been engulfed by the sprawling metropolis of Caracas. He soon discovered that he could engage with people who claimed to have little or no botanical knowledge by talking about traditional plant-based alcoholic drinks. These amargos, or bitters, are herbs and barks prepared with alcohol to extract, concentrate, and preserve their purported medicinal qualities.
On returning to London, Leizaola noticed that many similar bitters from Africa, the Caribbean, and South America were being sold in the markets and corner shops of London. Such an exotic collection of bitters and herbal remedies promised to be a reflection of multicultural London, and would serve as a compendium of botanical knowledge amassed from all corners of the world. London's Global Bitters Cabinet is Leizaola's collection of these alcohol-based tinctures, lotions, and bitters, and also contains many plant-based liquors and cocktail bitters found in London's bars and nightclubs.
The exhibition explores the fuzzy boundary between medicinal and recreational alcoholic products sold and consumed in London, all of which come under the umbrella of herb and plant content. Many of the recreational drinks on display started out as patent medicines—Absinthe, Jagermeister, Chartreuse, and Campari to name but a few. Of these, none has flirted with the medicinal and recreational as much as the juniper-based Gin. Originally conceived by the 17th-century Dutch physician Franciscus Sylvius as a diuretic to treat urinary disorders, Gin was sold in pharmacies throughout Holland. Due to its high alcohol content, Gin soon found favour as a recreational drink, especially among English soldiers fighting in the Thirty Years War. The soldiers noticed its calming qualities before battle, coining the term Dutch courage. Gin soon became a popular recreational drink in London and its consumption was increasingly blamed for social problems, as famously depicted in William Hogarth's Gin Lane, and led to passing of the Gin Acts in the mid-18th century. In a completion of the cycle, Gin became the Imperial drink, prescribed to British civil servants in Africa and India along with the quinine-containing tonic water to help stave off malaria.
One remarkable aspect of London's Global Bitters Cabinet is that such interplay between medicinal and recreational uses of alcohol still exists. Next to a cabinet stocked with homoeopathic tinctures and herbal remedies that would not look out of place on the shelves of a local pharmacy, is a television monitor playing adverts from around the world, marketing these same products as recreational drinks. The same drinks (give or take a little sugar and more appealing packaging) are used in disparate social activities with markedly different effects on consumers—intoxicants and detox agents, poisons and remedies—all sold on the strength of their herbal and plant content.
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Ricardo Leizaola
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Through its multimedia displays, the exhibition strips away the context in which these bitters are sold and consumed, leaving a range of products that are largely indistinguishable in terms of their colourful claims and (disclosed) ingredients. A cocktail of the homoeopathic myths and misconceptions that exist in our society, this exhibition is well worth a visit—I also recommend contacting Leizaola, since the anecdotes he has collected along with his many bottles really bring the exhibition to life.
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