An ancient remedy: Bitter herbs and sweet wine

For Mary Poppins, a spoonful of sugar helped the medicine go down. For ancient Egyptians, wine did the job.

New chemical analyses of ancient wine jars suggest that Egyptians mixed herbs into wine to create medicinal remedies, researchers report. The findings, published online April 13 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could be the earliest direct evidence for wine containing medicinal substances, the scientists say.

Literary evidence of such drinks had already been brought to light. Ancient Egyptian papyri dating from abo