Comment by jncfhnb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jncfhnb | Hacker News Reader

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> The term [Aqua Vitae (“water of life”)] was used by the 14th-century alchemist John of Rupescissa, who believed the then newly discovered substance of ethanol to be an imperishable and life-giving "fifth essence" or quintessence, and who extensively studied its medical properties.[3]

You’re not going to find a well defined germ theory breakdown of the potability of water because it did not exist. It’s not like they could identify clean water vs dirty water. It’s not like drinking dirty water meant you were going to die either. Generally speaking, people understood that drinking more alcoholic drinks was likely to have health benefits among other things, hence the term “water of life”. Drinking alcohol was seen as a move that would improve your health, including as literal medicine. It was frequently drank because it was good for you. Not strictly because they knew they couldn’t drink the water. They did drink a lot of dirty water too.

Do you think distilled alcohol can be used as an alternative hydration source instead of water? Might I ask have you ever tried it?

> Drinking alcohol was seen as a move that would improve your health, including as literal medicine

Even if that’s true it’s not at all related with alcohol being a replacement for water. It’s like if someone if in 400+ years decided that most people in the 2000s only ate supplements instead of actual food due to similar reasons.

If you’re referring to the fact that alcohol is a diuretic, then just say that. that’s basically a myth in the popular understanding. A drink has to be fairly strong to dehydrate you. A beer will probably hydrate you. But it might vary by person for stronger beers.

The drinks we are discussing here are extremely weak and definitely going to hydrate you.

> Even if that’s true it’s not at all related with alcohol being a replacement for water. It’s like if someone if in 400+ years decided that most people in the 2000s only ate supplements instead of actual food due to similar reasons.

Then maybe read my whole post where I explicitly said they drank a lot of dirty water

Alcohol is a duretic, that is no myth. Vasopressin/ADH inhibition is well documented and studied. You are talking out of your ass about hydration by alcohol. Even miniscule amounts of alcohol increase duresis via supression of ADH.

https://x.com/tony_breu/status/1034891346069413888

I too have heard about the theory about how alcohol was safer to drink than water, however, a lot of literature also points to the fact that aclohol was consumed mostly for inebriation.

Alcohol being a diuretic is not a myth. All Alcoholic drinks being enough of a diuretic to dehydrate you is. A small beer that is less than 1% is definitely not going to net dehydrate you. The alcohol is still a diuretic, but it does not offset the fact that you’re also consuming a large amount of water in the drink.

Your reference to “literature” is not correct. The drinks being discussed here were incredibly weak, and were often given to folks like workers and children. Definitely not to get drunk. That is not to say there wasn’t other alcoholic drinks that people consumed for the purpose of getting drunk.

It has nothing to do with alcohol though. Unfiltered and unpasteurized weak beer will go bad in a few days even if you have a fridge.

It was boiling that kills the bacteria and people knew that it improved the “quality” of water that wasn’t safe to drink.

I wonder if people in a few hundred years will think that we drank so much coke/etc. because tap water was dirty an polluted with lead. Because that sounds about as silly as this myth..

Ambiguous. Smaller ABV will still have some effect. Small beers were typically started at 10% ABV and brought down. Other alcohols were typically made strong and then diluted with plain water. Boiling is of course good.

Also, people regularly drink bottled beverages to avoid unsafe water conditions. A light Beer is actually one of the very safest things you can drink because the carbonation makes it very unlikely that they’re not giving you a refilled bottle while traveling

> A light Beer is actually one of the very safest

It doesn’t have much in common with premodern/medieval light table beer.

Is it really a theory rather than a hypothesis or mere speculation?

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