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ALEX KAMMERLING: OK, well, thank you very much for
turning out to hear me talk.
It's a real honor to be at Google.
If it wasn't for Google, I think I would have had to have
gone to the library to research some of this stuff,
or spoken to a real person.
So, thanks to Google, most of this research was done with
your search engine.
Thank you very much.
So I guess I should probably start with introducing myself.
My name is Alex Kammerling.
My background is bar tending.
I started almost 20 years ago, and actually was an artist.
I was a sculptor and worked in bars to pay my rent, and had
far more success making cocktails for people than in
selling art to people.
Anyway, so as life takes you on these courses, and I ended
up channeling creativity into making cocktails.
And it was one of my fortes.
I went on to design lots of cocktails for brands.
I went into a cocktail book for the BBC, and then went on
to do a bit of journalism.
I still work for different brands, such as Grey Goose
***, Millers gin, Appleton rum and Campari.
So I've been around.
But actually, it was when I was working for a brand of
gin, called Millers, and I was talking about training.
I was training bartenders and doing these consumer talks
about the histories of spirits.
And I would talk about the history of gin and
the history of ***.
And at some point in this history, I'd talk about how
alcohol was being used medicinally.
Then I thought, what happened to healthy ***?
So I went off and I developed my own brand of spirit, which
is what you're drinking right now.
I'll tell you about it later.
But actually first, I'm just going to talk to you about
this history of alcohol as medicine, because I think it's
fascinating, and I hope that you do, too.
If you have any questions, we'll do the first bit of the
talk, and then I'll make some cocktails and demonstrate some
of the drinks that you can make with it, just in little
small ones, I'm afraid.
You won't be stumbling out of here too
drunk, just little samples.
If you've got any questions, then please ask me at the end.
In the beginning, there was ***.
As soon as alcohol had been discovered, it was used for
medicinal practice and as a medicine itself.
And if you look at alcohol on a very simple level, it's
antiseptic, it anesthetizes, and it increases well-being.
In early operations, if you had a gangrenous leg that
needed removing, they would get you blind drunk before
they hacked it off with a blunt saw.
Wouldn't take away much of the pain, but it would help.
And then they'd use alcohol on the wound
afterwards to clean it.
And there's of course, the oldest toast,
let's drink to health.
Now we forget alcohol is natural.
Fermentation is a natural process.
It's yeast feeding on sugars, which turn
into CO2 and alcohol.
It's how beer and it's how wine is made.
What we don't realize is while alcohol is actually produced
in our stomach, that fermentation process happens
in our stomach all the time.
Some people have it more than others, so their liver is
quite used to processing alcohol.
It's one of the jobs of the liver.
It's only when we overload it with too much alcohol that it
becomes a bit stressed, and that causes lots of problems.
One of my favorite quotes, "I've taken more out of
alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me." Winston Churchill.
Humans are not the only creatures that
like to drink alcohol.
Don't know if you saw this in the news last year.
This is elk that got drunk, because it was eating
fermenting apples.
So animals are attracted to the high
calorific content of alcohol.
An elephant can smell the rotting fruit of a marula tree
from 10 kilometers away.
And if you give an elephant alcohol, it drinks more when
its stress levels are higher.
Same as humans, we all drink a little bit more when we're a
bit more stressed.
So I want to talk about nature.
Let's talk about herbal medicine first of all, then
we'll talk about the use of alcohol.
Of course, nature goes towards nature for its drugstore.
If you're an animal, you would chew a leaf, you'd scratch a
bark, you'd dig something up, and you'd naturally gravitate
towards it.
Chimpanzees are thought to consume 125 different plant
varieties in their life, just to keep them healthy.
So the classic way, once humans have come along, and we
can use these as well, of course, make soups, make teas
out of them, cook with them, eat them raw.
But actually, the best way to extract the oils and the
alkaloids and the resins that are contained within plants,
and their medicinal properties, is to infuse them
into alcohol.
Alcohol is a solvent.
It breaks those down.
It preserves those properties.
And also alcohol goes into the blood stream immediately,
taking that desired effect to the parts of the body.
Now let's start with alcohol, first of all.
Now the first medical records were from Egypt.
This is the Edwin Smith papyrus.
It records back to 1,500 BC, thought to contain information
that goes back 3,000 BC.
And here is documented various formulas for childbirth,
including dates and onions and honey and cow's milk, but they
used to give beer to their mothers
before they gave birth.
You think about it, alcohol relaxes muscles and takes away
some of the pain.
And if you're going to have a small human removed from your
body, a couple pints of beer is going to ease
that process somewhat.
That's all they had, unfortunately.
The father of modern medicine, Hippocrates, he used wine as a
base for medicine.
And he made something called vinum Hippocraticum, or
Hippocratic wine.
And what it was was this local wine, and local herbs and
spices and berries and nuts and peels
infused into that wine.
Really, it was the first form of vermouth, but it was his
cure for intestinal worms.
Now the thing with wine is it eventually goes off.
But it will extract some of the properties of the plants.
It will preserve them to a certain extent.
And wine will go into your bloodstream much more
effectively than if you were making nettle soup.
Nettle wine goes straight in.
But of course, wine goes off.
So it wasn't until the Chinese came along and invented
distillation.
Of course, fermentation is a natural thing.
Distillation is a man-made process.
So it means that you're concentrating the alcohol by
refining it.
You're heating it up, you're concentrating the alcohol,
you're reducing the water.
And so you're just making a much purer form of alcohol.
So what the Chinese did, along with their traditional Chinese
herbal medicines, their use of distillation was put together.
And essentially what they created
was the use of tinctures.
So this here is a very small bottle of echinacea tincture.
Echinacea root infused into 45% alcohol.
This was just bought from Neal's Yard Remedies.
So it's 2,000-year-old information that's still being
used today, albeit not as often as it was.
We'll come on to that in a minute.
So from this point on, alcohol's been a really useful
base for medicine.
Now let's just talk about the Chinese, quickly.
The Chinese were the first alchemists.
They believed in transmutation.
Transmutation was turning one thing into another.
So turning lead into gold, for example.
They believed that if you ingested gold, you lived a
longer, happier life.
They also believed if you ingested mercury, you lived a
longer, happier life.
So take with a little bit of pinch of salt.
But they were finding distillation.
They were turning wines and beers into spirits.
They believed in harmony in the body, yin and yang, and
the balance and the five elements were all connected.
The Persians, the Greeks, the Arabs all went to China to
learn about this alchemy.
And they brought that through into the Arab countries where
the Arabs were making
perfumes, as well as medicines.
Now eventually, they came into Western Europe.
And it was the Western European alchemists that set
the benchmark for the great spirits of the world.
This is a lovely painting from an English painter, kind of at
the end of the alchemic era.
But what I like about it is just the way that the light is
shining down.
It's beautifully painted.
Being an artist, I appreciate that.
But you can see this wizened old man
leaning down at his flask.
There's almost this divine light shining down on him.
Because they really believed that what they were creating
here had magical properties.
You can see these guys in the background here-- if my laser
pointer's working--
the apprentices here, just making notes, in awe of this
wise old man.
These guys, the alchemists, they were the druids, the
philosophers, the doctors, the scientists of the day.
And very secretive bunch of people.
There was no alchemist.com.
You had to learn information through word of mouth.
He would tell him.
He would grow old and tell someone else.
So it spread very slowly.
They were very secretive.
They didn't share their information like what we share
information today.
And if you had connections to these guys, it
was a status symbol.
You drank--
you got beer, wine and spirits, because you could.
Because you had these connections and you were a
powerful person.
Now at the time, they didn't realize that alcohol killed
germs, and they don't realize that the water was carrying
the diseases.
So the people that drank more alcohol than water lived
longer, which is why the original spirits were known as
eau de vie, aqua vitae, and acquavir, the water of life.
Now gin was one of these spirits that was
created as a medicine.
Juniper berries are diuretic.
The theory was that these infused into alcohol would
extract the oils and the properties, preserve them,
because they were going on long
journeys to the West Indies.
And this guy here was a Dutch university professor who was
the first person accredited with making gin.
Sent it to the West Indies.
He thought that by clearing the bladder, it would clear
the bloodstream-- or the body-- of dengue fever and
yellow fever, and all the other tropical diseases they
were getting.
Of course, it doesn't.
But it does take very nice with tonic water, which is
much better at curing malaria.
And also we had the apothecaries.
Because the apothecaries, this is the start of pharmacy here.
And it was really the commercialization of the
alchemic arts.
So you can see here, this is in the 1400's.
So you've got someone taking a prescription here.
You got this guy just grinding down in his special
[INAUDIBLE].
Someone at the back here weighing out a prescription.
All these jars and things in the bottom.
Now apothecary comes from apothecarios, or storekeeper.
They were storing botanicals, natural
botanicals, wines and spirits.
During this period, remember that the French, the Dutch,
the Spanish were all traveling the world, colonizing,
importing clothes and nutmeg and ginger and mace, and all
these things that they'd never seen before.
So suddenly, the apothecaries had not only their own
botanicals growing all around in the countryside, but also
these exotic botanicals, as well.
And so this is about how pharmacy really started.
So we're going to skip 400 years now.
This is a plate from an apothecary doing exactly the
same thing.
But it's much more grand, very ornate.
Beautiful buildings, nice detailing on it.
And they were really designed to be attractive places to be.
They were temples to health, if you like.
During the 1800's, a number of brands were invented that
still are around today.
Angostura bitters, invented by a German doctor to help the
troops in Venezuela.
Peychaud's bitters here, which is something that
you might not see.
This is a bit more of a bartender's brand, but it's
bitters created by an apothecary in New Orleans.
Gaspari Campari was a major liquor reached in Milan.
And even Coca Cola was invented as a health drink.
Coca Cola was sold in pharmacies.
It was sold with soda water.
Soda water was believed to give good health.
And so the Coca Cola concentrate was mixed with
that soda water.
And it was sold as a restorative, as a pick-me-up.
Nine milligrams of *** in each serve does help pick you
every day, I find.
Interestingly, the alcohol-- the temperance movement came
to America before--
came to Atlanta before the rest of America.
And they said, no, no, no, you can't have alcohol in here.
Alcohol was bad.
So you're OK with the ***, just take the alcohol out.
So for years they had *** and not the alcohol.
Next up, we've got more apothecaries.
Now this is, for me as an ex-bartender, this is where it
starts to get very interesting, because we've got
the grey area of pharmacy and bar tending all kind of
converging.
And cocktail culture was really developed
through this time.
Now I don't know if anyone of you like drinking cocktail
bars, but there's a number of cocktail bars that look very
much like this, these days, whistling shop, if you ever go
to [INAUDIBLE], Speakeasy style is very fashionable at
the moment.
This is a defining photo for me, because look at this guy
behind the counter here.
White jacket and tie.
I don't know if anyone's ever been to 69 Corporate Row, but
this is exactly what they wear behind the bar.
If you look on the counter here, straws, glasses, bitters
bottles, up here Coca Cola sign, lots of jars and
infusions and things going on.
But look at these two guys here, just quite relaxed,
hanging out, a table, glass in front of them.
They're having a drink in their pharmacy.
If you wouldn't ever go into booths and just track a bottle
of Benylin, you'd get arrested.
But this was how people were taking their medicine.
Of course, what helps medicine go down?
Spoonful of sugar.
Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
Bitters, like these things, were not very nice by
themselves.
You add some sugar, you add some spirit, you heat it up or
you cool it down with ice, and you've got a cocktail.
And this is how cocktail culture was developed.
This is a very old drink, the Sazerac.
But before we talk about that, let's talk about this.
The 1896 definition of a cocktail is a mixture of
spirits of any kind, water, sugar and bitters.
The important bit here is the bitters.
To make that palatable and to make a nice drink, add some
spirit, add some water and some sugar.
Cocktail culture.
How many people walk into bars and still say, I'll just have
a little one, for medicinal purposes?
So there are huge amounts of bitter brands on the market.
This one here, although it's got Montreal on the label,
this was Stoughton's bitters.
This is a coffee, actually.
Stoughton's bitters was one of the first patented medicines
in this country.
It was patented in 1712, before the word cocktail had
even been defined, this was being mixed with brandy as a
kind of restorative.
So most of these brands were stomach bitters.
I won't mention this one here.
Let's go past that, if this is being filmed.
But anyway, the bitters were generally stomach-based.
The idea was that the bitterness would get the
gastric juices flowing, so the food, when it hit the stomach,
would help you digest the food, and the nutrients from
the food would get absorbed into the bloodstream.
That was the theory.
Now there was a little bit of-- during Prohibition, these
things weren't banned because of their medicinal values.
There was also a small movement from the doctors,
really, because the doctors at the time had been prescribing
alcohol as part of their-- one of their medicines.
If they came in for surgery and they said, doctor, doctor,
I'm really stressed, for whatever reason it was, they
would say, go home, have a couple of
whiskeys, you'll be OK.
But there was growing paranoia in America about alcohol.
People weren't really sure about whether it was safe or
[INAUDIBLE], because the temperance movement was so
big, and obviously, led to Prohibition.
So 13 years without alcohol.
But the small little loophole was, for a few months, you
could actually get alcohol in prescription.
If you could find a doctor that was willing to fill you
out forms and say, yes, this man has got chronic stress, he
must have whiskey every evening, you could actually
get anything that was being confiscated back in.
So something happens here, which completely
revolutionized the way that medicine is created.
And I think this is why we are so paranoid about alcohol
these days.
So the story of aspirin.
Aspirin comes from two natural botanicals,
meadow sweet and willow.
The active ingredient is salicylic acid.
Now meadow and willow sweet--
meadow sweet and willow have been used as pain relief for
thousands of years, infusions of wines made into teas and
tinctures and all sorts.
A German company called Bayer, you may have heard of them,
they found a way to synthesize the salicylic acid without
needing the natural botanicals anymore.
So managed to chemically replicate this, and they
invented aspirin, without needing these anymore, and
also without needing the alcohol.
And of course, they patented aspirin.
You can patent aspirin, but you can't patent nature.
Put a huge amount of money into the
pharmaceutical industry.
It's now worth $350 billion, something like that.
Of course, anything that's gone before is old fashioned.
It's outdated.
It's not right.
I'm not a herbal medical practitioner by any stretch,
but what I'm interested in is the lack of alcohol.
You didn't need it anymore.
Suddenly, you needed alcohol to extract these botanicals,
and with the invention of modern pharmacy, you didn't
need it anymore.
So it just slowly started dying out, and no one really
raised an eyebrow.
Guinness is good for you.
This is how it was advertised for years and years.
An actual fact, the NHS used to give every mother who gave
birth a bottle of Guinness.
Fascinating, isn't it?
Until the mid-1980s.
Someone in procurement was, yes, 10,000 swabs, 50,000
needles, 2 palettes of Guinness.
I just find it amazing that the NHS were buying Guinness.
Of course, the only alcohol you're going to find these
days in a hospital is in the antiseptic hand gel.
This is an interesting shot which you
don't see very often.
It's funny, this.
This is a few years ago.
It was published in 2006.
The American Medical Association published it.
It was a study from 34 different countries, one
million subjects.
And it looked at drinkers and non-drinkers and the general
mortality rate.
Here's your death rate, along here.
You've got number of units of alcohol consumed a day.
The solid line here is for a man.
Dotted line here is for a woman.
Now you can see, as soon as you have half a unit of
alcohol a day, your death rate goes down, or your life
expectancy goes up.
According to this, and this is obviously a fairly broad
statement, but a man can have 3 and 1/2 units of alcohol
every day and still be better off than abstaining.
That's what that says.
That's what that says.
Now the reason why you don't see that is because obviously
people are silly, and they think, oh
yes, alcohol is fine.
We can drink as much as we want.
Of course, you cannot.
It's about moderation.
Now there are loads of health benefits to alcohol.
Here's a few.
There's been tons and tons of research done on it.
Unfortunately, most of these institutions don't put their
neck on the line and say, actually, if you're going to
have a drink a day, you're going to be all right.
There's a chance you're going to be OK.
It's been associated with a reduction in risk of kidney,
thyroid cancer, Alzheimer's, stroke, diabetes, and even
catching a common cold is rescued
from moderate drinking.
There's one institution that does--
the British [INAUDIBLE]
they do say that it's-- well, the interesting thing here is
the word may.
Drinking small amounts, one to two units of any alcoholic
drink, regularly may offer some protection against heart
disease, especially in men aged over 40 and women who
have been through the menopause.
Now most of the research that's done hasn't been of a
whole generation, so they're all fairly short.
So you have to take the older generation, because they're
the ones that are dying off.
So it might still work for people under 40.
I'm getting near to that point, as well, so I certainly
am going to be having one to two units a day.
Alcohol basically thins the blood and helps the clots.
So heart disease is, along with cancer, pretty much neck
and neck as the number one killer in this country.
An interesting statistic that I saw recently that came from
America that said that if all of the drinkers in America
stopped drinking, there'd be 80,000 more deaths in America.
Have a look.
Google it.
Google it.
That's quite interesting.
So here's a couple of quotes on my last slide, before I
make some cocktails.
So this first quote comes from a university professor in
Tennessee who's an addiction specialist looking at family
medicine, especially with alcohol.
So "alcohol is accurately viewed as beneficial nutrition
that prolongs life and enhances a gracious and joyful
lifestyle for some, and is equally and accurately
recognized as a life destroying, multi-system toxin
for others.
Nowhere in medicine is the double-edged sword so sharp on
both sides." Thank you, John, for that.
Very good.
This comes from the UK Department of Health, which
they are reviewing, this might not be--
this might be changing quite soon.
But currently, this is the UK Department of Health's, from
the Sensible Drinking Report. "Middle aged or elderly
non-drinkers may wish to consider the possibility that
light drinking might be of benefit to their overall
health and life expectancy."
Of course, again, the very English way to say, if you
have a drink a day, you'll probably be alright.
So I don't know about you, but I will
certainly drink to that.
Right.
Before I make the cocktails, if you have got portable
communication devices, follow me on Twitter or like my
Facebook page.
Thank you very much.
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