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Does having a shot of what you were drinking the night before actually cure a hangover & why is it called hair of the dog?

buttercup;665356 wrote: Does having a shot of what you were drinking the night before actually cure a hangover & why is it called hair of the dog?


no it's tosh.

it's ment 2 say what makes ya feel crap will bring ya out again.

Regarding the cure, its basis is the principle of homeopathy.The cure of disease is effected by drugs that are capable of producing in a healthy individual symptoms similar to those of the disease to be treated, and that to ascertain the curative virtues of any drug it must be "proved" upon healthy persons - that is, taken by individuals of both sexes in a state of health in gradually increasing doses.

(Britannica)

Only certain branches of homeopathy employ dilution and potentiation of the drug. The essence of the technique is the similarity rule.

As for the expression, it's named from a folk cure for rabies which involves applying the hair of the dog that bit you to the bite. It's extended to the hangover cure by the equivalence of the technique. Nothing to do with similarities there.

Would anyone like Plutarch's cure for jaundice posting?

Would anyone like Plutarch's cure for jaundice posting?





Yes please. Nothing like a good jaundice posting on a Sunday morning to go with your coffee and crumpets. :-6

Nomad;665425 wrote: Yes please. Nothing like a good jaundice posting on a Sunday morning to go with your coffee and crumpets. :-6The ancients held that if a person suffering from jaundice looked sharply at a stone-curlew, and the bird looked steadily at him, he was cured of the disease. "Such is the nature," says Plutarch, "and such the temperament of the creature that it draws out and receives the malady which issues, like a stream, through the eyesight." So well recognised among birdfanciers was this valuable property of the stone-curlew that when they had one of these birds for sale they kept it carefully covered, lest a jaundiced person should look at it and be cured for nothing. The virtue of the bird lay not in its colour but in its large golden eye, which naturally drew out the yellow jaundice.

Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden Bough. 1922.



It is a passage which has often brought me pleasure through recollection, as have so many other observations from that book.

It is a passage which has often brought me pleasure through recollection, as have so many other observations from that book.



Obviously this goes without saying. It too has filled my bucket with joy this morning.

Thank you spock. :-4

Out of interest, why have you still got Tariq Aziz in detention? It's over four years now and he's not even been charged with anything. I'd note that, by contrast, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Minister of Information, was released within weeks of surrendering to US forces at the same time.

spot;665436 wrote: Out of interest, why have you still got Tariq Aziz in detention? It's over four years now and he's not even been charged with anything. I'd note that, by contrast, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Minister of Information, was released within weeks of surrendering to US forces at the same time.






If you dont know Im not going to tell you !

Nomad;665438 wrote: If you dont know Im not going to tell you !


Parroting the official line, eh?