The Universal Hangover

Everybody who has ever had a hangover thinks he knows all about this fashionable phenomenon; in this he is probably wrong. But on one point he is usually unyielding: he knows the world's best cure. All this misinformation was sadly scattered until two bright and breezy British types decided to "do for the hangover what Dr. Kinsey did for sex." Now they have done it, in a slim volume just published in London entitled Wake Up and Die. It will cure no hangover, but may enliven convalescence.

In the drier aspects of their research, Authors David Clayton and Punch Cartoonist David Langdon learned that some Spaniards call a hangover a clavo (nail), short for "a nail in the head." And one nail, they believe, drives out another.

Hangover preventives have been peddled since the days of Pliny. His favorites were screech-owl eggs, roasted boar's lung and powdered pumice. Pliny also quoted an Assyrian who had good results with a swallow's beak, ground up with myrrh. (He gave no directions for catching the swallow.) Bitter almonds had a legendary reputation in the Middle Ages, but Sir Thomas (Religio Medici) Browne, checking up in the 17;th century, sadly reported: "That antidote against ebriety . . . hath commonly failed." Later came raw eels, thoughtfully suffocated in wine. Present-day self-treatments include yeast, yoghurt, lime juice, vitamin B1, cabbage water or diminishing doses of alcohol.

The cabbage is the source of the first hangover cure that Clayton and Langdon actually recommend: sauerkraut juice. "Every icebox," they say, "should have this Universal." They also recommend "the Spirit of '76" (spirits of ammonia), and an international array of pick-me-ups. These usually contain at least one hair of the dog in the form of Pernod, curacao, cognac, absinthe, Fernet Branca, or just plain white wine.

Author Clayton offers an exotic "green Rotterdammer," made with a dash of green Pomerans bitters, two teaspoonfuls of sugar and soda water. "But," he warns, "add the soda water carefully or else it fizzes over with a nerve-racking noise." Illustrator Langdon ("Not a very good drinker," he says) tries to stick to a simpler recipe: stop drinking before it is too late.

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