In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria

[Dunkeld]

Maybe Benjamin Franklin did not say so after all ...

“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.” — Benjamin Franklin

Who wouldn’t want to believe that one of America’s most important founding fathers — especially one who was known for consuming his fair share of drinks — didn’t also spew wisdom about said drinks? In this case, he did not say this. Bacteria was first observed in 1676 by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, but he called it animalcules. The word “bacteria” become more well-known with Louis Pasteur’s germ theory in 1870, which is a full 80 years after Franklin died.

https://vinepair.com/articles/fake-drinking-quotes/

But it is such a nice quotation!

[Dunkeld]

Did you know?

[Erik_Kowal]

Though the germ theory of disease was formally described only one and a half centuries ago, prior cultural practices evolved in a manner that did in fact take account of the existence of microorganisms, even though the people performing them did not understand the underlying mechanisms facilitated by their actions.

For instance, for millennia humans have taken advantage of yeast and bacteria to ferment grape juice (wine), grains (beer) and vegetables (sauerkraut, kimchee, yogurt etc) without comprehending the biology or chemistry of what they were doing. This crowdsourcing of cultural information through experimentation and incremental adaptations of technique down through the generations parallels the evolution of organisms through a similarly blind process of trial and error.

Going back to the waterborne bacteria mentioned in your fake quote, you may or may not know that in the West, the consumption of small beer to avoid falling sick from contaminated water was commonplace before people had access to a reliable domestic water supply. (See, for instance, this Wikipedia article.)

[Bobinwales]

I once had a friend who used to say, "I never drink water because I know what fish do in it".