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Notes -
Though it's true that, as others point out below, that the alcohol component of digestifs can make you feel better, I think there may be more to it than that. Most of them include quite a few botanicals, especially bitter botanicals, that could plausibly have some mild therapeutic benefit. Additionally bitter tastes on their own are possibly able to stimulate liver activity, as bitter compounds in nature are often toxic ones!
There are tons of companies out there that sell bitter extracts for digestion that, though often in an alcohol solution, don't give any appreciable amount of alcohol per dose. Random top search result: https://digestivereviews.com/br/c-bitters/
Mostly-negative article that nonetheless gives a medical patina to effects they may have: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/digestive-bitters/
Also, I've been on a booze-free kick recently and really love bitter drinks and aperitifs, so I've been drinking a zero-proof version, and for what it's worth it does seem to still help digestion a bit.
Overall it doesn't seem implausible to me that the human digestive system is 'supposed' to have some bitter compounds run through it, since it's only pretty recently that we've so decisively removed bitterness from our diet. And America is a bit of an outlier here as this post demonstrates; bitter drinks are popular in europe, as are foods like raddiccio and endive, and in Asia you have things like bitter melon. It was only quite recently that Dutch botanists bred our brussels sprouts to lack the bitterness they once had. https://www.myrecipes.com/ingredients/why-brussels-sprouts-are-less-bitter
Just like we removed the microorganisms from our environment to the point where our immune systems may become miscalibrated, seeing threats where there *should be *some but are none and attacking healthy tissues, maybe we removed bitterness from our diet that our livers think should be there and they end up understimulated?
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