宿醉的文化歷史

As long as there has been alcohol, there have been hangovers - and yet there has been no cure. Though there's no lack of morning-after tips, we don't have a pill or drink that can instantly reduce those telltale symptoms of nausea and exhaustion.

只要碰了酒，就會宿醉--而且還無藥可解。儘管不乏解宿醉的建議，但並不存在能立即緩解噁心和疲憊症狀的藥丸或口服劑。

Journalist Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall set out to investigate why and the result is Hung Over: The Morning After and One Man's Quest for a Cure (out now from Penguin Random House). The Verge spoke to Bishop-Stall about the cultural history of hangovers, why your hangover is not the same as mine, and what's keeping us from that cure.

沙烏格內西·畢曉普-施塔爾（Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall）記者究其原因，一番研究後發現謎底是一本書--Hung Over: The Morning After and One Man's Quest for a Cure（企鵝蘭登書屋目前沒有本書）。The Verge雜誌採訪了畢曉普-施塔爾，瞭解了宿醉的文化歷史、爲什麼人與人的宿醉狀況不一樣、爲什麼沒有解藥？

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. I assume that hangovers have been happening as long as we've had alcohol. What's the first cultural reference to a hangover?

值得一提的是，採訪內容已略有改動。我想自打有了酒飲以來，宿醉就一直存在了。所以，宿醉的第一則文化故事是什麼呢？

I think that depends on what your belief is in certain poems and certain books. The early Talmud tradition of Hebrew culture actually suggests that it was a bunch of grapes rather than an apple that cast Adam and Eve down into this earthly plane, so that could almost be seen as the first-ever hangover. Later, we have Noah actually making wine and becoming intoxicated from it.

我認爲這取決於你對某些詩歌和某些書籍的看法。早期的希伯來猶太傳統文化實際上表明：亞當和夏娃是因爲吃了一串葡萄而非蘋果纔來到人世的，所以這幾乎可以被視作第一次宿醉。後來，諾亞開始釀酒，併爲酒沉迷。

Even what we considered the first book in English literature, Beowulf, has all these warriors taken down because they got too drunk the night before battle. There are actually quite a few examples throughout history of wars being lost and empires even falling because of ill-timed drinking of courage the night before.

在英國文學最古老的一本書《貝奧武夫》中，戰士們因爲大戰前一晚喝得太多而戰敗。事實上，歷史上有很多這樣的例子：前一天晚上不合時宜的飲酒帶來的是戰爭失敗、帝國淪陷的結局。

What about the term "hangover"? How recent is it?

"宿醉"一詞是怎麼來的，什麼時候出現的？

It's an extremely recent term for a malady that's older than language. The word "hangover" doesn't appear in writing further back than around 1902, in a book called The Absurd Dictionary. After that, it's hard to find another reference to the term until about 20 years later, right between the World Wars. Today, you see it becoming a really popular part of the lexicon, so much now that it's used in languages all around the world.

這是一個新出現的詞語，來源於歌詞（與語言出現的更早）。"宿醉"一詞最早出現於1902年一本名爲《荒誕字典》（The Absurd Dictionary）的書中。在此之後的20年，鮮少有見。但世界大戰期間，人們又能看到這樣的字眼。現而今，它是一個很受歡迎的詞語，幾乎全世界都在使用。