Gin and Tonic (1930)

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 2/3/03 5:24:51 PM Eastern Standard Time, Bapopik at AOL.COM
writes inter alia:

>    OED has 1935 for "gin and tonic."  That's not too bad, considering
that's
> about when Prohibition ended.  I'
>
>     31 August 1930, NEW YORK TIMES,
>
>     1 April 1934, NEW YORK TIMES,

It is commonly said that the term "gin and tonic" comes from Britishers in
India (or perhaps in some other country with a similar malaria problem.)  The
British had to take quinine as their anti-malarial.  Now quinine is extremely
bitter, so they took gin with the quinine to make it palatable, or perhaps to
anesthetize their taste buds.  Hence gin came to be called "tonic" because it
was a widely-used medicinal, and the combination of course became "gin and
tonic".

I might add that in the 19th Century.quninie was thought to be a miracle
drug, useful against a wide variety of fevers (actually it is useful only
against malaria.)  The US Army of the post-Civil War era used qunine freely,
but accompanied it with whiskey rather than gin.

The above story is plausible, and might be true.  HOWEVER, if it were true,
one would expect 19th Century or early 20th Century British authors writing
about the Empire to mention gin-and-tonic, and neither Barry Popik nor the
OED have found any such.  I tried a quickie Google search matching "gin and
tonic" with EM Forster, Rudyard Kipling, and Joseph Conrad and found no hits.
 So perhaps it is an etymythology.

I did find the following from Joseph Conrad (who is best known as the author
of "Apocalypse Now"):

_'Twixt Land & Sea_  Chapter IV
<begin quote>
“Pooh! Pooh! I’ll tell you what, lieutenant: you go to the house and have a
drop of gin-and-bitters before dinner.
<end quote>

from URL http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/c75tw/chap13.html

Hmmm.  Perhaps the English in their malarial empire referred to the
concoction descriptively as "gin and bitters".  However, in the US "bitters"
was already used for Angostura Bitters and other non-medicinal flavoring
agents, so when circa 1930 qunine water became popular in the US it got
renamed "tonic", perhaps by analogy with the New England usage of "tonic" for
carbonated beverages.

Any comments?  Any serious drinkers on this list?

       - James A. Landau