What amazed me as I read the advertising material from Pabst about its Tonic is that the beverage was referred to as ‘food’.
In an 1890 page in the Secret booklet called “Still More Secrets” we read: “Malt Extracts are prescribed by physicians to promote sleep, to strengthen nerves, to build up the system as a Tonic, to help people to recover quickly from wasting diseases, and to invigorate the exhausted. It is a food.”
In that sense people were encouraged to drink this beverage because it was to them a food, full of what is essential for the human body.