‘Wine’ back in those days would have been terrible:
Preservation efforts are the most noticeable culinary difference between ancient and modern wine. Modern bottles help protect wine today, but exposure to oxygen quickly spoiled ancient wines. Vintners tried to preserve them with resin, which made the wines sticky and thick. Other additives included lead, lye-ash, marble dust, salt, pepper, and random assortments of herbs that were used to make wine remotely palatable.
You know a lot about the history of wines.
All you described is new information to me.
I do recall hearing that many countries favored drinking wine when clean or potable water could not be guaranteed.
That’s one reason French and Italian children would be accustomed to wine at the dinner table.
but...... wine was more healthy than water
First thought—Lazarus is probably the most famous case of false death we have heard about.
When my son was in Iraq in the summer, he said they drank water by the gallons, so the quantity of wine, possibly watered, drunk by Alexander in June is not surprising. In fact if it was too well watered it may have been contaminated by disease. Beer and cider, often hard, were two major beverages in the American colonies. The addition of resin to wine may have had health giving properties. Pycnogenol from the French maritime pine, Taxol from Pacific coast yew trees, and Arbor Vitae an important herb in Colonial America are all from pine type trees. Cabot was amazed at how quickly is crew recovered from scurvy once the Canadian Indians introduced him to use of pine, spruce buds I think it was. I don’t think it was the vitamin C of limes, but rather a form of pycnogenol that healed them much quicker than conventional Vitamin C might have done.
Regarding “finest warmonger”, the author is of British heritage not US. The Brits have fishmongers, ironmongers, etc. Warmonger probably does not have the ugly connotation there that it does in the USA, but more the sense of a craftsman or professional.
Death by dehydration takes a while. My late husband suffering from advanced Alzheimers had begged to be allowed to die in our home. Two VA doctors had met with us in March, examined his advanced directives, and confirmed his wishes with him. In June he collapsed, spent a brief time in hospital and rehab nursing facility, managed to climb the stairs to our bed and never got up again. On Thursday in June he did not want to eat the soup I tried to feed him. My son was there and we called the VA doctors. They told us feed him if he asks for it, give him water if he wants it. By that evening he was in a coma and died the following Tuesday. Five to six days without water. He was 75.