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Ancient Greeks engraved their drinking cups with groveling entreaties to the spirit Pausikrepalos, whose main job was delegating and regulating hangovers. Their Roman counterparts preferred to wolf down fried canaries and owl eggs. The Mongolians relied on sheep eyes, the Assyrians swore by ground-up sparrow beaks. Colonial Puritans flogged themselves and bled the hangover out, while Old West cowboys brewed up a pot of Jackrabbit dung tea. Voodoo-inclined Haitians would (and probably still do) jab 13 pins into the cork of the bottle that brought the pain. And then there’s the hair of the dog. The theory that a hangover...

The French call it "la gueule de bois," or wooden mouth. For Germans, it's "Kater," or a tomcat. Japanese know it as "futsukayoi," or "two-days drunk." But whatever the language and wherever it takes place, a hangover is the same: headache, nausea, shaking, blurred vision, biliousness, dry mouth... the list of evils is long. In Roman times, Pliny the Elder swore by raw owls' eggs. In Elizabethan England, a pair of eels suffocated in wine was touted as the trick. Green frogs were an acceptable substitute for those who were out of eels. In the 19th century, hungover chimney sweeps...