Copyright © 2004 the Brewery History Society

It was the Duke of Wellington who laid down the dictum that soldiers, if they are to win battles, must be nurtured on beef and beer. There is also evidence to prove that the British armies engaged in fighting ‘Bony’ were well aware that beer, especially stout, had medicinal value. It gave them courage before the fight, and after- wards, whether wounded or fatigued, helped the valiant warriors to renew their strength.

"Good ale," as the old saying goes, "is meat, drink and cloth."

The Germans, who have always ranked among the world's greatest beer drinkers, have a proverb to the effect that beer is "liquid bread"-and they, too, have known since Blucher's day and before, that it is a medicine of singular potency. No one, however, knew exactly how its sedative and curative properties were to be explained until quite recently. It was in 1957 that the Munich Publishing House of Carl Gerber issued a booklet entitled A Medical Vietv of Beer, in which science at long last comes to the aid of, and confirms, the ancient folk lore. Beer, we are informed, is a first-class substitute for the sleeping tablet-an excellent "nightcap." Further, it contains important ingredients which, imbibed in suitable quantities, will either prevent, or help to cure, a whole host of human ills.

The author of the booklet, Prof. Wilhelm Stepp, who is, it is understood, in no way connected with any of the 27,000 breweries which flourish in his country, believes that the therapeutic value of beer is due to its two basic constituents-barley and yeast. Thousands of years ago, in Babylonian and Egyptian times, bread made from barley really was the staff of life. People consumed much less meat than they do to-day, but were stronger and healthier-the reason being according to the Professor, that barley contains far more vitamins than any other cereal.

Yeast, too is a furnisher of vitamins of the B complex, and so it is possible for a bottle of beer to make up for dietary short-comings of all kinds.

Herr Stepp makes the point, for example, that nicotillic acid, the B2 vitamin, which is one of the most important ingredients of beer, is a well-known means of preventing pellagra-a curious disease which occurs in tropical and sub-tropical countries, and is characterised by skin lesions, disturbances of the stomach, and nervous disorders which can lead on to insanity. Formerly, pellagra was thought to be due to the eating of infected maize, but it is, in fact, a deficiency disease. It exists in wine-drinking countries, such as Italy, but not in the beer-drinking countries!

Lactotlavin (known also as riboflavin), another B2 vitamin, acknowledged as an important growth-promoting factor in human beings, is also contained in beer. Bavarian doctors have, in fact, taken to prescribing beer as a method of speeding up the healing process in cases of bone fracture. Absence of lactoflavin in diet, believed to be common in civilised communities, is a frequent cause of skill infections-and here too one, at least of the sovereign remedies is beer.

Another vital ingredient of "barley wine," singled out for special mention by Professor Stepp, is phosphate which builds up and maintains physical strength.

There are, says the author of the Munich treatise, about twenty different kinds of beer, but from the health point of view it makes little difference which kind we drink. All beers, provided that they are brewed from barley and yeast, have medicinal value, and will help to keep the doctor at bay. Professor Stepp's recommended minimum dosage is given as at least one pint every 24 hours- a rule to which the Bavarians - on statistical evidence compiled recently - exactly adhere.

Britons, it should be added, are drinking only half that quantity, with hazards to physical and mental well-being that can only be guessed at. The Americans, who spend millions of dollars annually on "tranquillizing" drugs, drink only one-third of a pint of beer per day-and are plainly heading for catastrophe.