NEW YORK, NEW YORK—Alyssa Loorya and her team at Chrysalis Archaeology have recreated two nineteenth-century tonics whose bottles were unearthed at a site that was once a German beer garden on the Lower East Side. One small, green bottle carried the bright orange “Elixir of Long Life,” and two others contained “Dr. Hostetters Stomach Bitters.” “We wanted to know what this stuff actually tasted like,” Loorya told DNA Info New York. The recipe for the Elixir of Long Life was found in Germany in a nineteenth-century medical guide, and it contains aloe, gentian root, and alcohol. The stomach bitters brew recipe includes Peruvian cinchona, cinnamon, and cardamom seeds. “These types of cure-alls were pretty ubiquitous in the nineteenth century, and always available at bars. Similar bitters and ingredients are still used today, in cocktails, and in health stores, but I guess we don’t know if it was the copious amounts of alcohol or the herbs that perhaps made people feel better,” she said.