People have been consuming alcoholic beverages and most of them living to ripe old age for countless centuries. And for most of those centuries water that was not directly from a spring or processed in some way that involves boiling (as in a brewery or distillery, or a tea pot) was chancy to drink. The water from the tap in your house has probably been heavily processed with chlorine (which is itself a poison). I did not say nor mean to say that one could live entirely on booze. Only that those who indulged in moderation were consuming something safer than the unprocessed water that was generally available to them.
Look you said something stupid and I corrected you, that’s all.
If you don’t know hard work or hard military living, then maybe dehydration has escaped your awareness, and I have watched people with me collapse and even die from problems with their “precious bodily fluids”.
This was stupid.
“Considering the “quality” of the water available in the towns and cities (outbreaks of Typhus and Cholera were not uncommon) hard liquor, ale, beer, and wine were the safe bet to drink. Maybe the author thinks Perrier was around in 1830 or that boiled and distilled water tastes just dandy.”