I've had an increasingly awful chest infection for five weeks, mainly due to undermedication: last time I had a sinus infection (which I get all the time), the doc gave me some antibiotics to keep against the day of the next one, in case he'd be away when I got it.
He doesn't usually need to see me when I get these things - he's known me for years and knows what it's going to look like.
I took these, and they didn't make it better, and added a ferocious stomach pain. After five days of it, I emailed the doc and he faxed through a prescription for Augmentin to the local chemist; a five-day or seven-day course, I forget which. At the end of the course I was a fair bit better, but not quite, so I emailed again, and got a call from a locum. She point-blan refused to give me a further three days of Augmentin, and said I could go to their emergency clinic over the bank holiday weekend if I was still sick.
I was, but jibbed at the expense (for the clinic, not me), and also at having to cycle a couple of miles to the clinic. So I went out and got a bottle of decent Irish whiskey in Lidl (Dundealgan) and drank some, neat.
It didn't cure the dose (obv!), but it damped it down over the weekend and I was able to get through.
I think whiskey's great as a *short-term* cure-all. After all, what's the proverb - something like "An rud nach leighseann uisce beatha ná im, níl aon leighis ann" (or something better put) - the thing whiskey or butter won't cure, there's no medicine for.
In the end, by the way, a week later the doctor gave me Klacid and steroids, because the infection was deep in my chest. And I started taking high-dose Vitamin C and Vitamin D3 on the advice of a friend who does a bit of healing and said if I was getting infections all the time I was probably deficient. Seems to be working.
I credit the whiskey.