Makes sense. As you say in your piece, so much bullshit in these origin stories, and certainly in the “health effects” of such folk remedies. And yet…at another level, we often find a distorted version of something in them. I’d not give my own kids rock & rye made with horehound candy in place of medicine vetted by the scientific method, but white mint is a vasodilator. Just as the incredibly high phenols that come from peat do have antiseptic properties. My grandmother was an alcoholic and I’m sure she was dropping candy into JW Red for reasons other than health. But there is enough whisper of the actual past, combined with folk medicine, in these tales that get passed on through the generations, to excite the cultural historian in me.