This eighteenth-century drinking term referred to the insalubrious potion that servants in public drinking houses concocted by emptying their patrons’ unfinished beverages into a single large vessel. Drinking the resulting mixture of wine, beer, spirits, and phlegm after the patrons had left for the night was one of the perks of being a public-house servant. All nations took its name from the fact that the various liquors it contained had indeed been imported from around the world.