[Ads-l] Hair of the dog

[Laurence Horn]

> On Jan 1, 2021, at 1:53 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> The OED records the practice from the mid-18th century, but the phrase,
> applied to drinking, goes back more than 200 years before that.
> 
> But though _The Kitchin-physician, or, A guide for good-housewives in
> maintaining their families in health_ , by "T. K., Doctor in
> Physick"(London: Samuel Lee, 1680), recommends the "hair of the dog that
> bit you" as a treatment for hangover, no such advice is given "Against the
> biting of a Mad-dog."
> 
> For that, "Eat sweet brier-wort, and wash the hurt with a young Childs
> Piss, or with the decoction of Rhue, Figs, red-Coleworts, and Salt mingled
> with honey and butter."
> 
> JL

Perhaps the recourse to the hair of the offending dog was needed absent a suitably micturating young child or red colewort.  Better safe than sorry.


> 
> On Fri, Jan 1, 2021 at 1:14 PM David Daniel <dad at coarsecourses.com> wrote:
> 
>> Dictionary.com is saying that the expression "hair of the dog" or the
>> longer
>> version "hair of the dog that bit you" comes from an old practice of
>> putting
>> actual hair from the actual offending dog into the wound of the dog's bite
>> as protection against rabies. Is that correct?
>> Happy New Year, all.
>> DAD
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org