THE HORRORS OF ABSINTHE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9581, 4 August 1894, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE HORRORS OF ABSINTHE.

D raise the Algerian war, which lasted from 1844 to 1847, the French Army were more in danger from African fevers than from Algerian enemies. Several things were tried as antidotes tor preventives by the skilful army physicians. Finally absinthe was hit on as the most effective febrifuge. " ~ The soldiers were ordered to mix it in small quantities three times a day with the ordinary French wine. The luckless happy-go-lucky privates grew to like their medicine, which at first they swore at bitterly for spoiling with its bitterness that beautiful purple vinegar they fondly fancy is wine. But when absinthe alone began to usurp the time-honoured place of claretin the affections of the French Army, the evil became an unmixed one. Absinthe straighb as a beverage is a direly different thing from absinthe mixed as a medicine or an occasional tonic. The victorious army on their triumphal return to Paris brought the habit with them. Ib is now so widespread through all classes of : Parisian society Paris gives the cue to | France French men of science and publicists regard the custom of absinthe tippling as a vast national evil. The consequence of the use—and use of this drug ripens to abuse, even with men of unusual will powerhas been in France disastrous to a dreadful degree. Many men of remarkable brilliancy have offered up their brains and their iives on the livid altar of absinthe. Baudelaire, who translated all Poe'e works into French, had a terribly grotesque passion for the pleasant, green poison. In one of his mad freak& this minor French poet actually painted hia hair the same tint as the beverage that corroded his brain, possibly from an odd fancy to have the outside of his head correspond with or match the inside. Alfred de Musaet, who was the French Byron plus a tenderer, naiver touch, also fell a victim to the drug after George Sand gave the final smash to his fragmentary heart. A frightful historic pun occurred in this connection. Towards the end, when the great poet, growing more morose every day, bid from his old companions and was missing from his favourite haunts, one mm, not aware of his infirmity, exclaimed: "Why is ib that our dear He Musset absents himself from us nowadays ?" And a grim wit lispingly answered : " For a woman th' reathou, uty friend; he abthinth ! himthelf jutht becauthe die abthinth himthelf." 11 a'absente parcequ'il s'absinthe. Paul Verlaine, a French liltrateur and criminal, still living, who had n poem in the May number of Mr. As tor's English magazine, is another absinthe fend, and Guy de Maupassant is reported to have burned his brains away with the same emeraldine flames. The brain disease caused by . this drug is considered almost incurable. Far worse than alcohol or opium, it can only be compared to cocaine for the fcllnet«s of its clutch on poor humanity. What, then, is this dreadful drink composed of, and how is ib made? The answer is easy enough, though the process, to ensure perfection in the evil, is not so. Absinthe may be technically described as a redistillation of alcoholic spirits (made originally from various things—potatoes, for instance), in which, to give it the final character, absinthium with other aromatic herbs and bitter roots are ground up, or macerated, in chemist lingo. The chief ingredient is the tops and leaves of tho herb Artemisia absinthium, or wormwood, which grows from two to four feet in great profusion under cultivation, and which contains a volatile oil, absinthol, and a yellow, crystalline, resinous compound, called absiuthin, which is the bitter principle. The alcohol with which this and the essentials of other aromatic plants are mixed holds these volatile oils in solution. It is the precipitation of these oils in water that causes the rich clouding of your glass when the absinthe is poured on the cracked ice; double emblems or warnings of the clouding and the crackling of your brain if you take to ib steadily. Thus every drink of the opaline liquid is an object lesson in chemistry that carries its own moral. The continued use of abeinthe gives rise to epileptic symptoms as an external expression of the profound disturbance of the brain and nerves. One large dose of the essence of the wormwood, indeed, has been noted as causing almost instantly epileptiform convulsions in animals. The first effects of it are a profound serenity of temper and a slight heightening of the mental powers, coupled with bodily inertia. This is the general rule, bat, as a famous physician once remarked of a dreadful disorder in his lecture room, "Gentlemen, the chief glory of the beautiful disease I am now explaining is the remarkable variety of its manifestations."