Poet's Laurel, Ancient Egyptian Hangover Cure, Is Not Your Go-to Bacon, Egg and Cheese Sandwich
We’ll stick to our ibuprofen and eggs.
— -- You may want to keep this info handy, depending on your plans this weekend: An ancient Egyptian hangover cure has just been discovered.
Five hundred thousand papyrus texts from Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, dating back to the second century AD (1,900 years ago) were dug up by Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt from 1896 to 1907, and experts have been translating their contents ever since.
Just recently, one of the medical texts was found to contain a “drunken headache cure,” now more popularly known as a hangover cure. Are you ready for this ancient knowledge?
The text suggests that sufferers “wear leaves of Alexandrian chamaedaphne strung together.” Huh?
“So, basically wear a necklace of these leaves,” Egypt Exploration Society office manager Hazel Grey told ABC News. “It doesn’t sound like it should work, does it?”
The Egypt Exploration Society owns the majority of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri Collection, which is housed by Oxford University’s Sackler Library.
Alexandrian chamaedaphne is a shrub available online and more commonly known as “poet’s laurel,” should you want to actually give this a try. We’ll stick to our ibuprofen and eggs.