I can’t imagine gin being a brain tonic, but they used to say the darnedest things long ago. From an article written in 1904:
Gin as a Brain Tonic
There is a popular notion that more gin is drunk in London than in all the rest of the world put together. A man formerly in the wholesale liquor business in Holburn, England, expressed his surprise the other day that there is not more of it drunk in this country [the United States].
“You could manufacture it over here as well as not,” he observed, “and you probably would if your people knew how much superior it is to whiskey as a mental bracer. Many men drink whisky merely to tone their spirits, when, as a matter of fact, except brandy, it is the worst thing in the world for that purpose. Byron recommended Geneva to his friends as the true Hyppocrene, and in his capacity of literary worker rarely drank anything else. Americans spoil it by making cocktails and fizzes out of it. As a true intellectual tonic Geneva, or gin, or Hollands, or whatever you like to call it, is unequalled.”
Source (1904, January 29). Gin as a brain tonic. The Rice Belt Journal, p. 7.
