Purely anecdotal (so I’ll be interested to see if anyone points to actual data confirming or debunking) but when I have a really bad chest cold sipping whiskey definitely calms the urge to cough. Alcohol is a CNS depressant, right, so it’s possible that cough suppression is a non-placebo result.
Some quick (very quick) googling reveals the some cough meds (OTC) are in the 10-25% range for alcohol content. That’s probably not enough to do much when you only take a few tablespoons every few hours. Many years ago, I think it was a much higher concentration, even if it didn’t help your cough, the slight buzz may have been enough to make you feel a bit better. Watch old movies or read old books, A ‘sip of brandy’ seemed to be a cure all back then.
Yes, it has an antitussive effect - and it’s included in medicines that do not require it as a solvent (such as simple linctus). People also take spirits or liqueurs for their expectorant and cough suppressing effects.
Historically, ethanol was a major part of patent medicines (for example, a very popular remedy for “women’s troubles” (Lydia Pinkham’s) delivered a substantial alcohol kick.
These days, I suspect a lot more people are using ethanol as a sleep aid than they realize. While the suggested dose of ZzzQuil (1 ounce) isn’t much in terms of volume, it’s 10% alcohol, over twice the ethanol percentage of beer and close to that of the average wine.*
*the supposed “active ingredient” is diphenhydramine, but the alcohol helps. 
As an aside:
You gotta love how ZzzQuil advertises the product as " Not for colds. Not for pain. Just for sleep.". diphenhydramine is an antihistamine, sold as “Benadryl” as well as cheaper generic knockoffs. It’s amazing how putting in in a different box changes its purpose.
I doubt it helps that much. The dosage for ZzzQuil is 30ml, double it (based on your quote) and you get 60ml, that’s four tablespoons. Even a lightweight like me isn’t going to fall asleep from 2 oz of Coors/Miller/Bud Light. Add in two Benadryls and that’ll start to knock out a lot of people.
I’ve fixed the beginning of a mouth infection by swishing whiskey around my mouth for a few minutes, a few times a day. Since it was supposed to be a medicinal treatment, I spit it out. Didn’t want to add confounders to the experiment.
My father had a heart attack in 1951. Thereafter our doctor prescribed him one shot a day (but only one) of alcohol. He believed it “opened the arteries”. I take it this is no longer prescribed.
An acquaintance of mine, living a rural and un-moneyed existence, needed a molar pulled. He did it himself with pliers and a bottle of Scotch.
Anita Bryant was quite sick at birth. She was born at home and delivered by a country doctor. The doctor poured a tablespoon of bourbon down the newborn’s throat, induced vomiting, and saved the baby’s life. The use she put it to 40-some years later is kind of a side issue.
The recently-deceased Dennis Eichhorn wrote a story about a woman he knew who lived and workd near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and got a crumb of something radioactive stuck in her body. The doctor’s advice was to drink a case of beer as quickly as she could to flush it out, but it settled in her jawbone. Presumably she’s dead now. I imagine water would have been just as effective, though.
Yeah, you can use alcohol as kind of a medicine.
Well, the doc may have been on the leading edge 
What I am getting at, and what I’m pretty sure that you’ve heard about as well, is the consistently demonstrated protective effect of alcohol against coronary heart disease. Mind you, the evidence for this protective effect is based on retrospective studies which can be extremely misleading (even to the point of suggesting the opposite of what we now know to be true). To my knowledge, there’s not be a large randomized placebo-controlled trial looking at the protective effect of alcohol on coronary disease.
Caveats in hand, I will note that in addition to its consistent epidemiological association with protection from coronary disease, there are a number of quite plausible mechanisms to explain how it might do so. By far the most quoted mechanism is alcohol’s ability to raise the HDL-cholesterol (the ‘good cholesterol’). But other mechanisms also exist and include an aspirin-like effect of alcohol to ‘thin the blood’.
Here is an old but concise review of the issue.
I must emphasize, though, that no one should be advocating pre-emptive use of alcohol to lower the chance of coronary heart disease. Not only has there never been a study looking at that notion, but there is a huge amount of data on the risks of alcohol. When you couple that with the tendency of some people to abuse alcohol, then as I said: no one should be recommending it routinely.
Usually they use chlordiazepoxide (Librium), lorazepam, or Valium. Clonidine can also be used, and there’s another drug called acamprosate that in some people takes the craving away.
And then there’s good old Antabuse, which makes you puke your guts out if you imbibe. It’s been on the market since the 1950s, and over the decades, many people have said things like “Can I crush the tablets and put them in my spouse’s breakfast so s/he gets sick if s/he stops at a bar after work?” You could, but to work effectively, it must be voluntarily taken by the patient.
If it works, why not?
I’ve heard of some really weird things being used to treat, or prevent, migraines. Probably the strangest was an almost-homeopathic dose of Coumadin; there were some studies done in the mid 1990s but I haven’t heard any more about it.
It’s used as a co-solvent. The best example is dextromethorphan, which doesn’t dissolve well in water but does in alcohol, which in turn will dissolve in water.
My father had the same prescription - at least in the hospital for his coronary at age 48. He continued with it, never had another coronary and died at 93.
I remember hearing about a doctor injecting ethyl alcohol into a man’s heart to induce a controlled heart attack. I didn’t remember why, but then I looked it up…
It is a sleep agent if used as a very small amount (compared to a regular “social drinking”. ) … Can also be used as a stay awake agent,which is how many of the people in bars, disco style “night clubs”, casino ( and electronic poker machine,roullette,21 etc gambling dens the world over…)…
Doctors say that the artery opening and stress relieving effect of around 25 ml ethanol a day is better than 0 ml of ethanol a day.
This perhaps encourages the arteries to remain wider, more open and flexible.
( Under the “use it or lose it” theory ? The narrowing of the arteries is caused by the inflexibility of the artery… it may have remained flexible ,expandable… if it was expanded more often in the decades before… )
Back to sleeping… people often complain that the have a sensation from their FEET when they have insomnia…
ethanol - also my doctor put me onto the “alternative” (or perhaps , original…) valerian as a sleeping or stress relief tablet- ethanol and alcohol might help to relieve insomnia… ie promote sleep, , whether its stress or actual pain, whether blood flow ,oxygen (anemia ?) Diabetes ? related , or not ?
So the “ethanol is for sleep” is kind of true, but thats not to say “ethanol is a sleeping drug”.
It also has a direct effect on the cough reflex.
US Navy ships have been “dry” since 1809. But the ship’s doctor (or Pharmacist’s mate) always has a bottle of “medicinal” brandy on hand, to “treat” a chilled sailor (who has fallen into the sea, or chilled from a long watch outside).
Are you sure? The Navy itself claims that the prohibition took effect in 1914, by General Order № 99. As far as I can tell, in 1809 there was still a daily spirit ration of half a pint of rum or whiskey.
This is what ethyl rubbing alcohol is. Actually, it is low-quality vodka mixed with a small amount of a chemical that tastes horrible to discourage people from drinking it. By adding the disflavorant, it becomes an OTC drug and is no longer considered to be an alcoholic beverage for regulatory purposes.
Right. There could be a third factor (of whatever nature - genetic, psychological, environmental, infectious, etc.) that makes a person crave alcohol but that also provides a protective effect against coronary heart disease. One of the major theories is that coronary heart disease risk increases with stress and that teetotalers are more likely to live a stressful life. If that was the case, that would mean that administering alcohol to a stressed-out nondrinker wouldn’t decrease their coronary heart disease risk except to the extent that the alcohol lowers the person’s stress level.
Also, note that use of medicinal alcohol can be found in the Bible, so the idea isn’t new.