Was there ever a serious belief that nobody drank water? That seems a bit much.
I can think of a fiction book that rather heavily pushed the idea, but it seems like a few minutes of thought would show that there's no way to produce/transport/store enough beer-type liquid for people working on a farm.
Conversely, an aristocrat/noble who travelled to a different continent might conceivably attempt to only drink beers/etc.
GolfPopper · 2h ago
The more common version of this, which I do remember hearing in history courses in college, was that people in the Middle Ages frequently mixed beer or wine with water. Whether that was done purely for taste, or in the belief that it would make potentially unsafe water safe, and what the details of making water safe to drink by mixing beer or wine with it actually are, I don't know. The author himself makes this point repeatedly, that water was frequently mixed with wine (at which point people are drinking watered wine).
It's like there are two parallel arguments:
"Medieval Europeans exclusively drank alcoholic beverages, because the water was so bad." And,
"We currently over-estimate the degree to which people in the Medieval-era consumed alcohol, and under-estimate the degree to which they drank pure water."
The author seems to conflate the two willy-nilly, claims the first to be widely held, and that he has disproved it (while, among others, citing Classical rather than Medieval sources).
I can think of a fiction book that rather heavily pushed the idea, but it seems like a few minutes of thought would show that there's no way to produce/transport/store enough beer-type liquid for people working on a farm.
Conversely, an aristocrat/noble who travelled to a different continent might conceivably attempt to only drink beers/etc.
It's like there are two parallel arguments:
"Medieval Europeans exclusively drank alcoholic beverages, because the water was so bad." And,
"We currently over-estimate the degree to which people in the Medieval-era consumed alcohol, and under-estimate the degree to which they drank pure water."
The author seems to conflate the two willy-nilly, claims the first to be widely held, and that he has disproved it (while, among others, citing Classical rather than Medieval sources).