Aunt Phasie, who since
the morning had not taken her eyes from the pot where the soupe-aux-choux was
simmering, accepted a plateful. But her husband having risen to give her the
iron-water forgotten by Flore, a decanter in which a few nails were rusting,
she did not touch it.
Émile Zola - La Bête Humaine (1890)
Did people really put a few nails in a decanter of water and drink it as some kind of tonic to ward off anaemia?
Maybe some still do. Maybe it works. Maybe I'll stick to red wine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Nail_(cocktail)
ReplyDeleteTry this academic thingy:
ReplyDeletehttp://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=282394
Seems very likely, cheap and easy.
Sackers - pleasantly potent with not the slightest hint of rust.
ReplyDeleteDemetrius - I think Zola had some knowledge of this field. He sometimes wrote of minor characters having a chlorotic complexion.
They're good for blue hydrangeas as well...
ReplyDeleteMichael - I didn't know that. Ours is white.
ReplyDelete