Pre enlightenment Europe also saw cheap wine being sweetened with a lump of lead suspended in wine barrels.
Around the World in Six Glasses will tell you that tea replacing wine lead to Progress in Europe because they weren’t drunk all day but I wonder how much was inebriation and how much was lead exposure.
Smells like a little of column A, a little of column B.
Beer was also widely prevalent, right? Even if it's just small beer (<3%ABV), it's not exactly making you smarter. It's hard to hit the Ballmer peak, after all
Beer was their water treatment plan. You drank watered down alcohol as a way to avoid waterborne illnesses. Tea is boiling water which we still use to this day to deal with the water supply being contaminated.
