A doctor’s note opened a narrow legal door
In 1931, while visiting the United States during Prohibition, Winston Churchill received a doctor’s certificate allowing him to obtain alcohol for medicinal use. Prohibition barred the manufacture and sale of most alcoholic drinks, but the law made exceptions—including alcohol prescribed by a physician and dispensed through a pharmacy.
Churchill had recently been injured in a New York traffic accident. A local doctor, Otto Pickhardt, certified that he was recovering and that alcoholic spirits were medically necessary. The note famously described the required amount as “naturally indefinite,” while giving a minimum of 250 cubic centimeters. That was roughly 8½ fluid ounces, though the certificate did not specify a maximum.
The exception, not an end to Prohibition
The prescription did not make drinking generally legal or give Churchill a broad exemption from the law. It used an existing medicinal exception: a doctor supplied the medical justification, and a pharmacist could then provide alcohol under that authority. The system depended on paperwork and professional discretion, rather than on a special privilege written for Churchill.
The episode is often retold as a way he legally drank “massive amounts.” What the surviving note clearly shows is more limited: a physician authorized alcohol during his convalescence and set no upper limit. Its wording made the prescription strikingly flexible—but it does not, by itself, establish how much Churchill obtained or drank. The memorable loophole was in the doctor’s phrasing: a stated minimum, and no stated maximum.
