Headache, body ache, nausea, periorbital hyperalgesia, sensitivity to light and noise, diarrhea, thirst, lethargy, dysphoria and guilt. Those are symptoms I don’t have today after a quiet New Year’s eve.

However, drawing from international sources, I provide a few cures for those with systems that reacted badly to the dust at the bottom of their twelfth pint of Guinness.

• Italians drink large quantities of strong, homemade espresso. (Actually caffeine has scientific validity as a hangover cure.)
• Japanese suggest helpings of umeboshi, or dried sour plums.
• Russian men rely on cucumber juice or salted, carbonated cabbage juice.
• Scots value a Highland Fling: Add a tablespoon of cornflower to heated pint of buttermilk and season with salt and pepper.
• Romanian and Turks boil a cow’s stomach in greasy, salty root vegetable soup with garlic vinegar and cream.
• German hangover foods include Rollmops, Bismarkhering, Brathering and Heringssalat with beetroot and mayonnaise
• From Holland comes the Matjes, raw fresh salted baby herring eaten with onions and chased with a beer.
• Puerto Ricans rub a slice of lemon or lime in the armpit of their drinking arm before drinking.
• Mongolians thought a pair of pickled sheeps eyes in tomato juice to be the answer.
• Drink a whole raw egg and Worcestershire sauce, seasoned with salt and pepper but swallow in one gulp without breaking the yolk.
• Cowboys drank tea brewed from rabbit droppings.
• In Ancient Rome, party-goers breakfasted on sheep lungs and two owl eggs.
• In ancient Greece, the cure was deep-fried canaries.
• Syrians drank ground up sparrow beaks in water.
• Voodoo practitioners would take the cork of the offending bottle and stick it with needles.

Alas, the British Medical Journal provides the best solution

No compelling evidence exists to suggest that any conventional or complementary intervention is effective for preventing or treating alcohol hangover. The most effective way to avoid the symptoms of alcohol induced hangover is to practise abstinence or moderation.