ABSINTHE

[Fr.] Absinthium , L.; Wormwood , E.; Wermuth , G. This article is met with in commerce in the form of the dried herb with the flowers of Artemisia Absinthium , having a whitish-grey appearance, a soft feel, an aromatic and unpleasant odour, and an extremely bitter and aromatic flavour. The plant is indigenous, and grows in thickets, in mountainous districts, and on waste ground. Its odour is due to its containing an e ential oil; its bitterne is referable to absinth in , a crystallisable principle which may be extracted from the herb by water or spirit. The name absinthe is also given to an intoxicating liqueur which is extensively drunk on the Continent, and which unfortunately appears to be rapidly attracting consumers in this country. The remarks on this subject by Blyth in his admirable ‘Dictionary of Hygiène’ are so pregnant with important facts that they will be here produced verbatim et literatim . “An analysis recently made at the Conservatoire des Arts shows that absinthe now contains a large quantity of antimony, a poison which cannot fail to add largely to the irritant effects nece arily produced on the alimentary canal and liver by constant doses of a concentrated alcoholic liquid. And we have recently received the results of some experiments made by M. Magnan, of Paris. By means of succe ive distillations he has been able to isolate various products—(1) a blue oil; (2) a yellowish oil; (3) an oxygenated substance. There was besides a yellowish residue left in the gla . These various substances were tried on animals; ten grammes of the yellow sediment given to a small dog produced no effect; thirty centigrammes of the blue oil produced from eight to ten epileptiform attacks. The oxygenated product proved, however, the most powerful toxic agent. Fifteen centigrammes of it, injected into the veins of a large dog, caused the most violent epileptic attacks, which followed in rapid succe ion, and ended in death. There was an extraordinary rise of temperature, from 39° to 42° Centigrade, and the post mortem showed various apoplectic centres. Dr Decaisne regards the terrible evil of this almost universal absinthe-drinking as the greatest national calamity that has ever befallen France, and has made an eloquent appeal to the Government to strike at once a decisive blow at the trade in this liqueur. Originally the only important ingredient in its composition besides alcohol was the e ential oil of absinthium or wormwood; and though this without doubt added something to the mischievous effects of the liqueur, it would be impo ible to trace to it, or to the other comparatively trivial ingredients, the more serious of the special results which are now observed to occur to victims of absinthe, though the habitual drinking even in small doses of good absinthe is believed by Dr Decaisne, sooner or later, to produce disorders in the animal economy. Now various deleterious substances are added, the most important of these being antimony. As at present constituted, therefore, and especially when drunk in the disastrous exce now common in Paris, and taken, as it frequently is, on an empty stomach, absinthe forms a chronic poison of almost unequalled virulence, both as an irritant to the stomach and bowels, and also as a destroyer of the nervous system. The effect of absinthe is to produce a superabundant activity of the brain, a cerebral excitement, which at first is agreeable; intoxication comes on rapidly; the head swims, and the effect produced is nearly the same as that of poisoning by a narcotic, which certainly does not occur with an equal dose of brandy. With the absinthe-drinker, as with the opium-eater, the excitement the spirit produces diminishes daily in intensity. Each day he is obliged to augment the dose in order to bring himself up to the right pitch. The diseases brought on by the exce ive drinking of ardent spirits are produced with greater rapidity by the use of absinthe.” The amount of absinthe consumed in London has during the last few years been enormously on the increase. See Liqueurs .