Top all-time · #8567
Jim Chevallier
Personal blog · leslefts.blogspot.comhistoryculture
Jim Chevallier writes Les Leftovers, a personal blog at leslefts.blogspot.com about history and culture. Since 2015, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 10 times, most often “The great Medieval water myth (2013)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-03-17, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for posts on historical drinking and drug myths, especially the claim that beer was safer than water in the Middle Ages. Commenters cite it as a summary of that debate.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A food history blog, focusing mainly on early medieval food and French bread history, written by Jim Chevallier (visit chezjim.com for more). .
Most-linked posts?
- The great Medieval water myth (2013)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2015-02-11
- The great medieval water myth (2013)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-06-08
What Hacker News says?
https://leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-great-medieval-wat...
Comment linking /2013/11/the-great-medieval-water-myth.html
on “The daily life of a medieval king”Submitted The great Medieval water myth (2013) as a story · 123 points
HN discussion> Even alcohol was much more widely consumed during the Middle Ages, as it was safer to drink than water. Apparently this is a common view, but not one settled as correct: http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-great-medieval-wate...
Comment linking /2013/11/the-great-medieval-water-myth.html
on “Why animals eat psychoactive plants”Submitted The great medieval water myth (2013) as a story · 74 points
HN discussion"Drug use _started_ as illegal" Sherlock Holmes was portrayed as a regular cocaine user, and occasional user of morphine. At the time in Britain these were legal. BTW, the "beer was considered a safer drink than water" appears to be a modern myth. See http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-great-medieval-wate... for a summary. It may be that beer was considered more fortifying than water.
Comment linking /2013/11/the-great-medieval-water-myth.html
on “Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work”Submitted The Great Medieval Water Myth as a story · 36 points
HN discussionThere is some debate nowadays about the use of alcohol as a substitute for bad water(1). I think the reason you find alcohol so interesting because of the Iron Law of Prohibition(2): 'The iron law of prohibition is a term coined by Richard Cowan in 1986 which posits that as law enforcement becomes more intense, the potency of prohibited substances increases. Cowan put it this way: "the harder the enforcement, the ha…
Comment linking /2013/11/the-great-medieval-water-myth.html
on “What Historians Wish People Knew About Drugs, Part II: Isaac Campos”Submitted The great medieval water myth (2013) as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> A big part of it is about sanitation--since pure water wasn't so safe to drink, people drank far more tea (boiling kills bacteria) and beer/wine (fermentation has a similar effect). This is a massive myth.[1] It has historically been very rare to not have access to clean water. Beer and alcohol are nutritionally more dense than water, and for much of western europe's history they were watered down to the point of…
Comment linking /2013/11/the-great-medieval-water-myth.html
on ““A Toast to Your Health”: Getting Drunk in Colonial America (2013)”This is a good starting point with some good sources linked: https://leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-great-medieval-wat... By the way, this is the mainstream position among historians, it is only pop culture that hung up on the water myth.
Comment linking /2013/11/the-great-medieval-water-myth.html
on “Until the 14th century women dominated the field of beer brewing”
