HEALTH, a condition of physical soundness or well-being, in which an organism discharges its functions efficiently; also in a transferred sense a state of moral or intellectual well-being (see HYGIENE, THERAPEUTICS and PUBLIC HEALTH). "Health" represents the O.E. health, the condition or state of being h al, safe or sound.
The custom of drinking "health" to the living is probably derived from the ancient religious rite of drinking to the gods and the dead. The Greeks and Romans at meals poured out libations to their gods, and at ceremonial ban quets drank to them and to the dead. The Norsemen drank the "minne" of Thor, Odin and Freya, and of their kings at their funeral feasts. With the advent of Christianity the pagan cus tom survived among the Scandinavian and Teutonic peoples. Such festal formulae as "God's minne!" "A bowl to God in Heaven!" occur. The Norse "minne" was at once love, memory and thought of the absent one. Associated with these customs must have been the drinking to the health of living men. The Greeks drank to one another and the Romans adopted the cus tom. The Goths pledged each other with the cry "Hails!" a greeting which had its counterpart in the Anglo-Saxon "waes hael" (see WASSAIL). The Roman gallants drank as many glasses to their mistresses as there were letters in each one's name. Thus Martial: Six cups to Naevia's health go quickly round, And be with seven the fair Justina's crown'd.
The English drinking phrase, a "toast," to "toast" anyone,—not older than the 17th century—had'reference at first to this custom of drinking to the ladies. A toast was at first invariably a woman, and the origin of the phrase is curious. In Stuart days it was the custom to put a piece of toast in the wine-cup before drinking, from a notion that it gave the liquor a better flavour. In the Tatler No. 24, the connection between this sippet of toast and the fair one pledged is explained as follows: "It happened that on a publick day" (speaking of Bath in Charles II.'s reign) "a celebrated beauty of those times was in the cross bath, and one of the crowd of her admirers took a glass of the water in which the fair one stood, and drank her health to the company. There was in the place a gay fellow, half fud dled, who offered to jump in, and swore, though he liked not the liquor, he would have the toast. He was opposed in his resolu tion ; yet this whim gave foundation to the present honour which is done to the lady we mention in our liquor, who has ever since been called a toast." Health drinking had by the beginning of the i 7th century be come a very ceremonious business in England. Toasts were often drunk solemnly on bended knees ; in 1668 at Sir George Carteret's at Cranbourne the health of the Duke of York was drunk by all in turn, each on his knees, the King, who was a guest, doing the like. A Scotch custom, still surviving, was to drink a toast with one foot on the table and one on the chair. Pepys, in his Diary for June 19, 1663, writes: "To the Rhenish wine house, where Mr. Moore showed us the French manner when a health is drunk, to bow to him that drunk to you, and then apply your self to him, whose lady's health is drunk, and then to the person that you drink to, which I never knew before ; but it seems it is now the fashion." At dinners to royalties, until the accession of Edward VII., finger-glasses were not placed on the table, because in early Georgian days those who were secretly Jacobites passed their wine-glasses over the finger-bowls before drinking the loyal toasts, in allusion to the royal exiles "over the water." The Loving Cup.--The ceremony surrounding the loving cup to-day is reminiscent of the perils of those times when every man's hand was raised against his fellow. The "loving cup" sometimes has a cover, and in this case each guest rises and bows to his immediate neighbour on the right, who, also rising, removes and holds the cover with his right hand while the other drinks; this is a survival of the days when he who drank was glad to have the assurance that the right or dagger hand of his neighbour was occupied in holding the lid of the chalice. When there is no cover it is a common custom for both the left- and the right-hand neighbour to rise while the loving cup is drunk, with the similar object of protecting the drinker from attack. The stirrup cup is probably the Roman poculum boni genii, the last glass drunk at the banquet to a general "good night." See Chambers, Book of Days; Valpy, History of Toasting (1881) ; F. W. Hackwood, inns, Ales, and Drinking Customs (i9o9) .
