For most of human history, wine was not merely something to drink — it was one of medicine’s most important tools. From the physicians of ancient Egypt to the doctors of the nineteenth century, healers reached for wine to clean wounds, dull pain, and carry their remedies into the body. It is one of the oldest medicines on earth5. (Modern medicine, as we’ll see, takes a very different view — but the historical story is a remarkable one.)
Quick facts
- Wine is one of the oldest recorded medicines, used for thousands of years.
- Ancient Egyptian wine jars from c.3150 BC already held medicinal herbs and resins.
- Hippocrates and Galen used wine to treat wounds, fever and pain.
- Modern health bodies now warn there is no safe level of alcohol.
The oldest medicine
Wine’s career as a medicine is astonishingly old. When the biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern analysed residues inside Egyptian wine jars dating to around 3150 BC, he found the earliest direct chemical evidence of medicine on earth: the wine had been infused with tree resins and herbs, turning it into a drug-delivery system more than five thousand years ago1.
The logic was sound for its time. Wine was mildly antiseptic, it dissolved and preserved plant medicines that water could not, it supplied calories to the sick, it dulled pain, and it was often safer to drink than the available water. In a world without pharmacies, a jar of medicated wine was a whole medicine cabinet in one5.
Hippocrates and Galen: wine in the doctor’s bag
Greek and Roman medicine made wine central. Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, prescribed specific wines for an enormous range of conditions — for fevers, for convalescence, as a wound dressing, and as the base for other drugs2. Different wines, he taught, suited different ailments.
No one showed wine’s surgical value more vividly than Galen of Pergamon, the greatest physician of the Roman world. As surgeon to the gladiators, Galen used wine to cleanse and dress their terrible wounds — and later boasted that not one gladiator died of his wounds under his care3. We now know why it often worked: the alcohol and tannins in wine created a genuinely hostile environment for infection, an antiseptic centuries before anyone understood germs.
| Medical use | What wine did |
|---|---|
| Antiseptic | Cleansed and dressed wounds |
| Drug vehicle | Dissolved and delivered plant medicines |
| Sedative / painkiller | Dulled pain before modern anaesthetics |
| Safe hydration | Offered an alternative to doubtful water |
Monks, tonics and the medieval cabinet
Through the Middle Ages, wine kept its place at the heart of healing. Monastic infirmaries used it to comfort the sick and as the base for herbal tonics and elaborate compound remedies4. Medieval health handbooks like the Tacuinum Sanitatis discussed wine’s properties in detail, weighing which types warmed or cooled the body according to the medicine of the day. Wine was woven into the very theory of health.
Pasteur and the paradox
Even as science advanced, wine kept its medical halo. In the nineteenth century Louis Pasteur, whose study of fermentation founded microbiology, was among wine’s great champions7.
“Wine is the most healthful and hygienic of beverages.”— attributed to Louis Pasteur, 19th century7
It was a widely shared view. Wine remained in official pharmacopoeias into the twentieth century, and during American Prohibition doctors could still legally prescribe “medicinal” wine and spirits. The idea flared up again in the 1990s with the famous “French paradox” and excited talk of red wine and heart health. But that, it turned out, was closer to the end of the story than a new beginning6.
What we know now
Modern medicine sees alcohol very differently. In 2023 the World Health Organization stated plainly that, when it comes to health, there is no safe level of alcohol consumption; alcohol is a toxic, dependence-producing substance and a Group 1 carcinogen, and researchers can find no threshold below which its cancer risk disappears6. The apparent heart benefits once attributed to wine have been steadily undercut by better-designed studies.
None of this means the ancients were foolish. In a world without antiseptics, anaesthetics, clean water or pharmacies, wine really was a useful medical tool, and using it saved lives. But it belonged to that world, not ours. The history of healthcare with wine is best read as exactly that — history — a fascinating record of human ingenuity, not a health recommendation for today.
Frequently asked questions
More from this day in wine history
See everything else that happened on March 7 — who was born, what was bottled, and which laws were signed.
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References
- Penn Museum — 5,100-year-old chemical evidence for ancient medicinal remedies in Egyptian wine jars (P. McGovern). www.penn.museum ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Hippocrates. www.britannica.com ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Galen. www.britannica.com ↩
- Wine Enthusiast — The Long, Winding Path of Wine as Medicine. www.wineenthusiast.com ↩
- Nikolova et al. — “Wine as a medicine in ancient times” (Scripta Scientifica Pharmaceutica). journals.mu-varna.bg ↩
- World Health Organization (Europe) — No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health (2023). www.who.int ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Louis Pasteur. www.britannica.com ↩
Recommended reading
Patrick E. McGovern
By the scientist who found the earliest medicinal wine — the deep history of wine and the cultures that used it.
Rod Phillips
A clear global history that includes wine’s long career as medicine and its changing place in health.
As an Amazon Associate, This Day in Wine History earns from qualifying purchases. Book recommendations are chosen independently.
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