23 blue butterflies (bblue23) wrote in linguaphiles,
2012-09-02 00:17:00

Meaning of "Stimulant" in 1928

I'm reading Agatha Christie's The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928), and I came across the line "if Jane Harfield had had a slice of brown bread every evening and taken a little stimulant with her meals she might be here today."

I was struck by this use of the word "stimulant". Did this word mean alcoholic beverage in Christie's day? Was wine or some other drink believed to have a health-giving effect when taken with meals? No further explanation was given, so I was just curious!

I speak North American English, and of course in current times we use the word "stimulant" to mean something like methamphetamine, cocaine or caffeine, an "upper" drug as contrasted with "downer" drugs like heroin. But it is my understanding that alcohol is not really a stimulant but a depressant, so it's interesting to me how the word was used historically. Thoughts?
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  • 28 comments

st_aurafina

September 2 2012, 05:25:11 UTC 8 months ago

I wonder if it's a euphemism for a laxative?

bblue23

September 2 2012, 05:46:02 UTC 8 months ago

Really? What is your basis for that interpretation? It hadn't occurred to me to take it that way, interesting!

sollersuk

September 2 2012, 05:50:39 UTC 8 months ago

It seems a very possible interpretation to me. "Inner health" and "regular habits", both euphemisms for having a bowel movement every morning, were seen as vital to health at the time.

bblue23

September 2 2012, 05:55:49 UTC 8 months ago

Interesting, thank you!

frances_bea

September 2 2012, 13:28:29 UTC 8 months ago

Regular bowel movements (or, an efficient digestion and elimination system) are still central to maintaining health. When I go in for physical exams, I still get asked about my regularity.

bblue23

September 3 2012, 04:47:31 UTC 8 months ago

Where do you live? I don't think I get asked that at my physcial exams in the States. I do believe in the value of eating lots of fiber though, for maintaining a healthy weight and healthy digestive system, but I don't think that point of view has been fashionable or mainstream in any of the places I've lived. When I lived in Japan, it was particularly hard to find good whole grain bread and most people eschewed brown rice for white rice, which I found hard to understand. My family tends to prefer conveninece foods over whole grains and vegetables, so I'm an anomaly.

lizwinlove

8 months ago

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frances_bea

8 months ago

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houseboatonstyx

September 3 2012, 08:29:46 UTC 8 months ago

In the 1990s in California, an elderly woman who was in a hosptal for a while complained that she was nagged about that every day, and threatened with suppositories.

st_aurafina

September 2 2012, 06:00:00 UTC 8 months ago

Health ads for laxatives in the early part of the 20th century describe constipation in terms of sluggishness, or having a lack of energy - you have no interest in parties, for example, or you find it difficult to get out of bed. So, if you're constipated, you take something to 'energise' your system or give you back your pep.

The products are all described euphemistically, and until you see that the product contains paraffin or magnesium salts, you don't actually know what the product was for. Where I work, we still sell Marianbad Salts, which are technically a laxative, but they claim to be a health tonic. Very old fashioned, but people in their eighties still buy it.

So, in the bit you quoted, combined with the the reference to brown bread, I'd assume we were talking about health of the digestive system. Obsessed with bowel movements, they were, back then. Truly and bizarrely obsessed.

oh_meow

September 2 2012, 15:02:34 UTC 8 months ago

Andrews/Eno's salts are still quite popular in a lot of European countries like the UK and Spain for after a heavy meal.

bblue23

8 months ago

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gullinbursti

September 2 2012, 16:53:23 UTC 8 months ago

That was my thought too.. looking back at ads, they paint society as pretty much obsessed with swiftly-moving bowels. Hopefully that was exaggerated to sell their products, but it must have a speck of basis in reality.

houseboatonstyx

September 2 2012, 17:48:27 UTC 8 months ago

"I wonder if it's a euphemism for a laxative?"

I read that as "a euphemism or a laxative?"

pne

September 3 2012, 10:11:47 UTC 8 months ago

That was my first thought, too.

oryx_and_crake

September 2 2012, 06:11:57 UTC 8 months ago

I think that various tonics were very fashionable then; see, for example, H.G.Wells's Tono-Bungay. So the phrase might mean a bona fide tonic, rather than a laxative.

bblue23

September 3 2012, 04:35:50 UTC 8 months ago

Yes, that makes sense. It might have been a vague term for health tonic.

provencepuss

September 2 2012, 06:30:28 UTC 8 months ago

No it is just a way of referring to alcohol in a prissy way. People would also take a drink and say 'purely medicinal hahahaha'
The origins of 'aperitive' lie in the idea of a 'pre-prandial' drink to stimulate the appetite with a 'digestif' after the meal to help the digestion.
"A little stimulant" is just a drinkie-winkie! what would life be without euphemisms!

provencepuss

September 2 2012, 06:33:03 UTC 8 months ago

the reference to brown bread is more 'health' specific. Christie was writing at a time when it was considered 'cranky' to advocate brown bread etc ( Doris Grant's cookbooks , the original Hay Diet - which inspired all those diets where you don't mix food groups); if I remember the context the speaker is a what some referred to as an 'Earth Mother type'...health and fitness my dears!

dabroots

September 2 2012, 12:51:45 UTC 8 months ago

Imbibed in small amounts, alcohol quite often serves as a stimulant. And it also depends on the period of time over which someone consumes alcohol, their tolerance level, their immediate situation, overall mood, etc. My long-dead grandmother, for example, is said to have had a shot of whiskey with a spoonful of sugar stirred into it, every morning, as a stimulant--not an unusual practice, I'm told.

I've also heard "stimulant" casually applied to other consumable products that might provide stimulation, especially sugar, and particularly in regard to children.

I'm very much in North America, too, and that's where I've heard these terms applied.

bblue23

September 3 2012, 04:34:56 UTC 8 months ago

Interesting, thanks!

provencepuss

September 2 2012, 20:28:16 UTC 8 months ago

i can still remember a chemist (drugstore pharmacy) in England that sold 'tonic wines'...come to think of it I can remember when you could only buy olive oil in the chemist's unless you lived where there was an Italian grocery (and outside London that wasn't easy)!

st_aurafina

September 3 2012, 11:48:40 UTC 8 months ago

We still sell olive oil - it used to be a laxative (everything was a laxative back then!) but now we use it for cradle cap in infants. Or as a general emollient for the skin.

songindarkness

September 3 2012, 00:34:40 UTC 8 months ago

I've read the book several times and I think I always thought of it as alcohol (which acts as a stimulant before it depresses the system) for example, sherry was thought to aid the digestion or the popular "health tonics" of the time (which as described in other books of Christie's contained anything from borax to phosphorus to small doses of strychnine). It's interesting that it could refer to a laxative!

bblue23

September 3 2012, 04:34:19 UTC 8 months ago

Yes, alcohol was my first thought too! But I wonder where I could find a definitive answer about what Christie meant.

burningbooks

September 3 2012, 15:34:46 UTC 8 months ago

my first thought about this was "bitters" which coincides with the laxative/digestive stimulant interpretation. Bitters can also be (and often are) mixed with alcohol, so both these things might be true at once.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitters#Digestive_bitters
http://www.wholeapproach.com/newsletter/pop200401.html

bblue23

September 4 2012, 02:05:25 UTC 8 months ago

Thank you! All of the replies to this thread have made me want to try some European health tonics and bitters. I saw angostura bitters at the liquor store today, and I know they sell various bitters on amazon--I think I'll give them a try!

viciousdisorder

September 15 2012, 00:13:01 UTC 8 months ago

Do NOT drink angostura bitters straight. It's dreadful that way, and ridiculously potent. Yes I tried once... It's a bit like trying to drink straight vanilla essence. Using it to make lemon, lime and bitters as a drink is quite nice, 'though you don't need much bitters in the drink.