For hundreds of years alcohol claimed a prize place among the pills, potions and healing herbs of British pharmaceutical history.
A drop of gin was once advised to ward off the plague, a glug of wine to "defend the body from corruption" and a sip of absinthe to cure the body of roundworms.
Of course all this has changed.
As our understanding of the harms of alcohol on society and the individual has grown, it has given up its place on prescription pads - instead to be superseded by advice to refrain from all but cautious use.
An exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians in London traces its use and sometimes fatal misuse by medical men and women of the past, up to the calls for greater regulation today.
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