Calendar of Events
Note: Meetings are usually held on the second Sunday of each month, September through May, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Currently we are meeting via Zoom, but in-person meetings are held at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Services Center, 4805 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda, Maryland, and occasionally at other venues. The meetings are open to anyone. However, certain meetings may require a fee.
Corpse Reviver! The History of Cocktails and Medicine
Speaker: Camper English
San Francisco, California
SPEAKER BIO
Camper English is the author of Doctors and Distillers: The Remarkable Medicinal History of Beer, Wine, Spirits and Cocktails (Penguin, 2022), which Scientific American described as “every bit as entertaining as it is educational,” and The New York Times praised as “a tirelessly researched book on the centuries-long relationship between medicine and booze.”
Camper has also contributed to Popular Science, Saveur, Details, Whisky Advocate, Food & Wine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Drinks International, The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails, and many other publications. He is a journalist based in San Francisco and is weirdly famous for his work mastering perfect cocktail ice.
He is also the author of The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres, and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts (2023), which won Best New Cocktail or Bartending Book at the 2024 Spirited Awards from the Tales of the Cocktail Foundation. Camper is a judge of the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, has been a judge of the James Beard Awards, Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards, the Good Food Awards, and other bar/book competitions.
His website is Alcademics.com.
TALK DESCRIPTION
Nearly every ingredient in every cocktail has a history of medicinal use. In this talk, Doctors and Distillers author Camper English will deconstruct the 1930 drink “Corpse Reviver No 2” (gin, aromatized wine, lemon, orange liqueur, absinthe) — and look at how its ingredients of juniper (plague), citrus (scurvy), wormwood (worms), and even the sugar (lung problems) and distilled alcohol (baldness, snakes) were used to combat disease and postpone death – with very mixed results.
Alcohol and Medicine have an inextricably intertwined history which stretches back to ancient times when beer and wine were used to provide nutrition and hydration, and were employed as solvents for healing botanicals. Over time, alchemists distilled elixirs designed to cure all diseases. Modern cocktails like the Old-Fashioned, Gimlet, and Gin and Tonic were born as delicious remedies for diseases and discomforts. Camper English will reveal how and why the contents of our medicine and liquor cabinets were, until surprisingly recently, one and the same.