1960 magazine ad for V-8 Cocktail Vegetable Juices
The eight vegetables in V-8 are beets, celery, carrots, lettuce, parsley, watercress, spinach and tomato. And yes, I know tomatoes are botanically fruit.
(Note: It’s actually “alterative juice”, but I’m sticking with alternative juice because it amuses me.)
If you got syphilis, yo, this’ll solve it. Alternative juice will prolly dissolve it.
Let’s check out these Succus Alterans Alternative Juice ingredients! According to Wikipedia…
“Stillingia sylvatica was used by Native Americans for syphilis and as a cathartic, diuretic, laxative, and emetic. In large doses, it causes vomiting and diarrhea.”
Smilax ornata (sarsparilla) “was a popular European treatment for syphilis when it was introduced from the New World.”
Phytolacca Decandra (pokeweed) is poisonous and was used for skin diseases, rheumatism, weight loss, mumps and arthritis.
Lappa Minor’s (lesser durdock) larger cousin, Arctium lappa, was used as “a diuretic, diaphoretic, and a blood purifying agent” as well as a cancer, skin condition and cold/flu treatment.
Xanthoxylum carolinanium (Hercules’ club) is also known as the “toothache tree” or “tingle tongue” and was used to treat toothache.
Who needs orange juice with a delightful concoction like this!