Ever read The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart? I have. Several times, actually. Well, guess what book SHE is reading? “At last,” she writes, “a definitive guide to the medicinal origins of every bottle behind the bar! This is the cocktail book of the year, if not the decade.” What hallowed tome is she referring to? Folks, it’s a book so perfect for Peculiar Book Club that if it didn’t exist, I’d have to make it up: Doctors and Distillers by Camper English, the MEDICINAL history of beer, wine, spirits, and cocktails. BE STILL MY HEART. It’s true that, as a medical historian, I’ve always known alcohol was among our earliest medicines—and that it remains crucial to not a few today. But this story goes all the way back—to Egypt—and then a bit forward—to alchemists and monastic apothecaries. It takes a side road into germ theory, and then pops back out in forensics and the dangers of risky prohibition cocktails. What was alcohol meant to cure? Let’s see; wounds, worms, snakebite, malaria, scurvy, plague… Of course, we at the Peculiar Book Club feel it helps prepare you to read more weird books.