JakeWalking

Thought the moonshine post was coming when Jake went to Dixie --think again.

During Prohibition (1920-1933) in the United States, all alcohol was banned, family "recipes" came out, bathtubs turned into gin mills, moonshine brighten and "medicinal tonics" were the cure. Or where they? Seems that some of these solutions to a "dry thirst" led to a condition called Jake Walk or Jake Leg.

JAKE LEG - Paralysis brought on by drinking jake, Jamaican ginger extract, a patent medicine. It is believed that the malady was first discovered in Oklahoma City by Dr. Ephraim Goldfain in February 1930. "The first person to record a connection between jake and the paralysis may have been Ishmon Bracey, the black blues singer who cut 'Jake Liquor Blues' in Grafton, Wisconsin, in March of 1930." Jake leg "afflicted enough souls to instigate an entire subject of folk music. Blacks and whites were affected. It rendered men impotent. And it was no longer inspiring musicians by 1934, which meant it was a cataclysmic but discrete event." What had turned the harmless patent medicine into a crippler was the addition of tri-ortho-cresyl-phosphate, TOCP, a "plasticizer" used to keep synthetic materials from becoming brittle. This was during Prohibition and the Treasury Department tackled "the problem of people getting too much pleasure from patent-medicine tippling by ordering that the solids in fluid extracts be doubled." TOCP was believed to be harmless and was used to "boost the solids."

─ "Annals of Epidemiology: Jake Leg: How the blues diagnosed a medical mystery," by Dan Baum. The New Yorker, Sept. 15, 2003, Page 50.


Now don't go a thinking that every time Jake is seen walking funny he's got the Jake Leg, despite what he might say to southern girls.


Hipsters note: The JakeWalk is a new bar in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn, NY from Stinky Brklyn owners Michele Pravda and Patrick Watson.

Thanks to Romo inspiration for this post.

A huge apology to Destiny. A thousand pardons faire D.
Destiny mentioned the JakeWalk bar during the
J/R/Week in NYC. I think I missed it in the flurry of
their whirlwind schedule. Forgive me.