On the History Channel, they had a documentary that they called "How Beer Saved the World". One of the more interesting things about it is that during the middle ages, beer was consumed more than water, because the beer was safe to drink, and the water could sometimes be questionable.
Yes. In a time when men would just 'whip it out' and urinate in the middle of the street, and households would dump chamber pots out of windows and filth ran down the center of lanes, the drinking water was very questionable.
Beer brewing required the water to be boiled as wort and thereby killed the bacteria.
