I don’t know where that myth comes from. It doesn’t seem to have foundation in the historical record.
Beers and Ales used hops and boiled water.
Drinking water near large population centres were not boiled or treated.
People that mostly drank wines, beers, and ales likely suffered fewer bouts of dysentry and worse.
Here’s a competing theory—people liked beer, and drank a lot of it. If we want to get past armchair history, we need something more than a patchwork of unfounded speculation. We want something that would lead us to believe that one explanation was better than the other, or perhaps both are good, or neither.
There's no need to be a tosser (see HN guidelines), it's an argument that comes straight out of Medieaval recipe books for make beers and ales, straight from the time of the great miasma, and from the mouths of many UK historians.
It’s frustrating, because I’ve been told off for asking for evidence, even though I didn’t ask for evidence.
Every time I try get an answer, all the resources I find contradict the claims here. Water was the most common drink. Communities were built around wells or other water sources. The Romans built massive systems of aqueducts so they could have more water. I did a Google search and found a page full of results directly contradicting the claim that people drank beer because it was cleaner.
Also medieval authorities to great effort to keep water sources unpolluted with outright draconian punishments for those who did that. Of course they didn’t always succeed.. but still.
The point of medieval beer and ale making exercises was to make beer and ale, (which required boiling water as part of the common recipes of the day).. which very likely created a notable difference between those drinking mostly large amounts of low alcohol beer | ale made from boiled water compared to those that mostly drank unboiled liquids.
> which very likely created a notable difference between those drinking
Well I suppose they were somewhat more drunk most of the time and also more well off since they could afford it?
Also again, you can make assumptions but I’m not aware that there is substantial evidence that this was the case.
5% ABV does not kill much. You’d need distilled spirits for that.
While silver and other noble metals have antimicrobial properties, the percentage of alcohol in altar wine is way too low to make a difference.
When transubstantiated from wine to blood, it retains the accidents of wine, and those accidents will infect you with a disease just as any other.
That's the miracle of the Eucharist; our feeble senses can't distinguish it, nor could a microscope or science lab point out which is Eucharist, and which is ordinary wine.
Almost all Western churches suspended distribution under the species of wine, even though the odds were very, very low.
The Eastern Orthodox couldn't do this, however, and it led to several Greek bishops insisting that no disease could come from this Holiest of Mysteries, and that it is uniquely special and don't worry about COVID-19.
Somewhat made up for by people having less body mass, though.
A school of though existed at the time that believed that bathing was dangerous and a time that “allowed the venomous airs to enter and destroyeth the lively spirits in man and enfeebleth the body” (Thurley, Pg. 171).