Heir of the dog

If Prince Charles is guilty of anything in selling the ‘Duchy Herbals Detox Tincture’, now the subject of a hysterical scientific controversy, it is the sin of euphemism. The food supplement is marketed as a way to ‘eliminate toxins and aid digestion’. What this means, in the Queen’s English, is that it aspires to be a hangover cure.

According to the perfectly named Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Exeter University, the Prince is relying on ‘make-believe and superstition’, is peddling ‘outright quackery’ and even ‘contributes to the ill-health of the nation by pretending we can all over-indulge and then take this tincture and be fine again’. Professor Ernst needs to get out more. If he thinks that the Detox Tincture marketed by the Prince of Wales is contributing to Binge Britain, it is time for him to head out of the laboratory and into the high street on a Saturday night. The professor claims, touchingly, to ‘know everything about artichoke that there is to know’. Doubtless this is the cause of unalloyed celebration at Exeter University, but perhaps it is time for him to extend the range of his knowledge.

In the Prince’s defence, we point out that he is merely continuing a longstanding tradition in his family. Homeopathy, for instance, may be nonsense but it is nonsense that has born the royal seal of approval since it became popular in Queen Victoria’s entourage.

Second, it is plainly daft to judge hang-over cures in narrowly scientific terms. As Kingsley Amis so rightly observed, it is the ‘Metaphysical Hangover’ that really hurts: ‘that ineffable compound of depression, sadness… anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future’. In such circumstances, only the meanest-spirited don would begrudge users of the Prince’s tincture a few moments of placebo relief.