Vinegar as Biotechnology: a practice-based study

Vinegar is a catalyst for medical innovation. In medieval alchemy, vinegar was considered a ‘vegetal mercury’, used to transform metals into gold. Vinegar was associated with the Alchemical Androgyne: a symbol of the perfect fusion of opposites, represented as a bi-gendered angelic figure. The melancholy humour was classified as ‘vinegary’. In medieval medicine, vinegar was a common ingredient in curative drinks and surgery. These recipes express the understanding that bodies and their emotions are fluid, and capable of material change. Today, popular healthcare remedies recommend drinking vinegar for its ‘hormone balancing’ effects, echoing premodern discourses of ‘humoral balance’. The term ‘humoral regulation’ is still used to describe hormonal treatments. I will explore this relationship between medieval medicine and alchemy, and present-day endocrinology. As a medieval biotechnology, vinegar was used for bodily transmutation. My experiences as a psychiatric and gender-clinic patient give me first-hand understanding of current medical treatments which alter the hormonal and chemical conditions within the body. Viewing these experiences through the lens of the medieval past, I will provide new conceptual and sociological narratives of endocrinological and psychiatric healthcare. This study will enable hormonal and psychiatric treatments to be better understood as forms of dynamic physical transformation.