"As our understanding of the harms of alcohol on society and the individual has grown, it has given up its place on prescription pads - instead to be superseded by advice to refrain from all but cautious use. An exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians in London traces its use and sometimes fatal misuse by medical men and women of the past, up to the calls for greater regulation today. One of the earliest records in the many leather-bound books on display is a translation of the work of Roger Bacon, a 13th Century English philosopher and writer on alchemy and medicine."