Ale to the selling of beer labeled "strong beer" that had actually been diluted with small beer. In medieval times, ale may have been safer to drink than most water (the germ theory of disease was unheard of, and the sterilizing properties of boiling unknown); however, there is no period evidence that people were aware of this nor that they chose to drink ale for this reason. The alcohol, hops, and some ingredients in gruit used to preserve some ales may have contributed to their lower load of pathogens, when compared to water. However, ale was largely safer due to the
Cock ale "The Compleat Housewife": Thomas Fuller's "Pharmacopœia extemporanea" (1710) offers a recipe for Pectoral Ale (a cough medicine), which, with the addition of the afore-mentioned bird, parboiled, could apparently be turned into Cock ale. Fuller explained that the drink "sweetens the Acrimony of the blood and humours, incites clammy phlegm, facilitates expectoration, invigorates the lungs, supplies soft nourishment, and is very profitable even in a consumption itself, if not too far gone." The drink's supposed medicinal qualities were also advertised in John Nott's "Cooks and Confectioner's Dictionary" (1723), which claims that Cock ale is "good against a Consumption, and to restore