Enos in old Shanghai – Preparing for New Years Hangovers

Saw a piece in the newspaper today that said that good old reliable Enos was the best hangover cure you could find this coming New Years. Certainly in the past I’ve found that Enos can make a hangover slightly less painful but ‘cure’ might be stretching it.

Still Enos is truly a brand of the British Empire and those parts (like old Shanghai) where British influence reached in various ways (apparently the internet tells me, Americans don’t really know Enos powders). Shanghai loved the stuff in the early 1930s – well, it’s a tonic, claims to cure just about everything – they’d still love it; a Naobaijin for the thirties.

We used to call it Beecham’s Powders when I was a kid – somehow GlaxoSmithkline Powders (the currrent brand owners) sounds like some evil corporate plot to take over the world (and if any evil corporates were still in a financial position to do that GSK would have to be high up the list!). For the record Enos is a mix of Sodium Bicarbonate (46.4%), Citric Acid (43.6%), Sodium Carbonate (10%) and often referred to, so the internet tells me, as ‘fruit salt’ – didn’t know that, but the old Shanghai ad describes Enos as a ‘health giving’ ‘fruit salt’.

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