How to Give Up Wine, 1658

A Warning-piece to All Drunkards (1682),
Wellcome Library, London

There are many who when they have drank much Wine, that is the worst thing in the world for them, fall sick, and die of it. Now if you would refrain, and abhor Wine and strong drink... let three or four live eels, put into the Wine, stay there till they die. Let one drink of this Wine, who is given to drunkenness, and he will loath Wine, and always hate it, and will never drink it again: or if he do, he will drink but little, and with much sobriety. Another way: wash a Tortois with Wine a good while, and give one of that wine to drink privately, half a cup full every morning for three days, and you shall see a wonderful vertue.

Giambattista della Porta, Natural Magick

The sommelier recommends: a full-bodied red wine with notes of tortoise grime and a lingering aftertaste of eel death.

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How to Use Wheat, c. 1150

Tacuinum sanitatis casanatense (14th c.)

 "Wheat is hot and full of profit. Nothing is lacking in it… But, if anyone sifts out the bran from the flour (which is semolina), and then makes bread from that flour, the bread is weaker and more feeble than if it had been made from the proper flour… Whosoever cooks wheat without the entire grain, or wheat not ground in the mill, it is as if he eats another food, for this wheat furnishes neither correct blood nor healthy flesh, but more mucus. It is scarcely digested. It is not at all good for a sick person, even if a healthy person is able to survive on this food… If someone is ailing in his back or loins, cook grains of wheat in water, and place them, warm, over the place where he is ailing. The heat of the wheat will chase away the powers of that disease." 

 Hildegard of Bingen, Physica  

An advisory from the Medieval Grain Council: white bread will turn you into an ill-blooded mucus-monster. Also, have you tried porridge on your loins? 

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