“Corpse Reviver!” by Camper English

Culinary Historians of San Diego will present “Corpse Reviver! The Remarkable History of Alcohol and Medicine, As Seen Through A Drink,” with Camper English, at 10:30 am Saturday February 17, in the Neil Morgan Auditorium of the San Diego Central Library, 330 Park Blvd., San Diego.

Nearly every ingredient in a cocktail has a history as a medicine. In this very entertaining talk, we’ll deconstruct the Corpse Reviver No 2 (gin, aromatized wine, lemon, orange liqueur, absinthe) — and look at how its ingredients of juniper (plague), citrus (scurvy), wormwood (intestinal parasites), and even the sugar (lung problems) and distilled alcohol (baldness, gout, kidney stones) were used to combat disease and postpone death.

Camper English is a San Francisco-based cocktails and spirits writer and educator with a background in physics and a focus on the nerdy side of mixology. He is the author of Doctors and Distillers: The Remarkable Medicinal History of Beer, Wine, Spirits and Cocktails (Penguin, 2022), which Scientific American described as “every bit as entertaining as it is educational,” and the New York Times praised as “a tirelessly researched book on the centuries-long relationship between medicine and booze”. Camper has also contributed to Popular Science, Saveur, and The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails, besides many others.

The event is free and open to the public.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

San Diego Central Library, 330 Park Boulevard, San Diego, United States