attorney general's reports on just what the doctor ordered from 2012

Who was the attorney general responsible for the medical beer question?

When did Wiley argue that alcohol is a medical substance?

Why did the brewers and physicians posing as priests and rabbis try to convince the Congress?

When did doctors prescribe beer?

When did medical beer become law?

Is alcohol a medicine?

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Who was the attorney general responsible for the medical beer question?

the man to whom fate and presidential politics bequeathed the duty of deciding the medical beer question was Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. By the time the beer problem crossed his desk in early 1921, Palmer was under attack from civil libertarians for his harsh deportation campaign against foreign-born Communists and anarchists, best known as the "Palmer Raids."

When did Wiley argue that alcohol is a medical substance?

By 1921, Wiley could point to a great deal of recent scientific evidence to support his contention. In 1916, with Prohibition not yet enacted, the American Medical Association had declared alcohol's supposed medicinal properties entirely unsupported by research.

Why did the brewers and physicians posing as priests and rabbis try to convince the Congress?

Congress that beer was nothing less than vital medicine.

When did doctors prescribe beer?

And in the early months of 1921, a dedicated group of brewers, physicians and imbibers attempted to convince the U.S. Congress that beer was nothing less than vital medicine. Whatever craven thirsts might have inspired its advocates, the right of physicians to prescribe "medical beer" was the subject of intense national debate, drawing the attention of officials at the highest levels of government and provoking arguments within the American Medical Association and other professional groups.

When did medical beer become law?

By the end of November 1921 —much to the outrage of brewers and physicians who called the bill "a form of inhibition never before attempted in the history of legislative government elsewhere throughout the civilized world"—the bill had become law, putting an end to the strange brew known as medical beer.

Is alcohol a medicine?

The medical profession's official pharmacopoeia no longer listed alcohol as a medicine; to many doctors, and particularly to temperance advocates, this was as good as the final word. (Today, studies suggest that moderate drinking, particularly of red wine, may be beneficial to heart health.)