The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 20, 1901, Page 1

& though ities par- He will hours, and rn he will feel as gonizing lilness ed upon a nation- green terror. No h is such a vietim er. Imagine a na- siz t annually con- sumes 10080000 quarts of absinthe. A man does not have to be an Emile Zola with & mind to picture the horrors of ab- e drinking as set forth in “L'Asso- ' to know what a dreadful situation t sums up. It amounts te one quart of abeinthe to each Lhree inhabitants, in- cluding men, women and children. The reports of the Minister of Finance show thet there is as absnibe seiler to every three buildings jn Faris. more absinthe shops ttdn t ky mills on our notorivus Consider how much more effect of absinthe than whisky and t what that means to the French It means the near wreck of the in mind, body and soui. what her legislators fore; ling and horrible si grappled with the te gressively and actively and have just passed a bill in the House of Deputies forbidding the manufacture or sale of ab- he, which is pronounced *‘dangerous” he Academy of Medicine. It is unger- §t00d among the Goverfinent officlals Xhat this means that the academy must now promptly do everything possible to res- cue France from the colls of the “Green Terror.” It wes by no ordinary means that sbsinthe drinking was Introduced into France. The story 184, when the fighting 1= means whis- deadly "Afri- oan fevers. The best preventive dis- coversd was absinthe. At that time the French soldiers had not even heard of ab- the fnsidious stuff and in a year or so they wete mare willing, to give up their ailow- f claret than thé “green medicine.” they returned to France they car- ried the habit of ‘absinthe drinking along with them and quickly spread it among n the various he drinking beca army that reg forbidding ch soldi and sallors caught drihking it are severely tons F punished Absinthe was discovered and started on its carcer as an old woman's remedy for fever. lIike many other deadiy drugs. it is a wholesoma ecific for certain ail- ments when t-mperate quanti- R Wha: 2 keading Phusicia ,old crones in the Swiss Mou n HES ’tb S = /A tles. Tts abuse by {ts victims is what makes it such a deadly scourge. Its first makers, according to history, were two ains. They gathered and brewed herds for a precari- ous living and among other discoveries they found thit brewed wormwood was Bocd for fevers. They gathered the leaves and flowering tops, mixed them with va- rious other aromatie plants and poun the mass. Tha bruised particles were terward covered with alcohol and so for eight days distill ot ced A gréen liquor was then ed, to which a certain percentage e seed ol was. added. These old women sold the absinthe. roughly brewed to thelr customers stricken with fever. The patients were solemnly warned, how- ="SFCTION A\, JANUARY 207 1901 Abolt the Absinthe Curse. T may be truly said that if alco- lholism is moral decay, absinth- ism is its triple distillate; for of all the essonces or liqueurs none are so pernicious, both in their moral and physical effects upon the human economy, as absinthe. Its degenerative effects are proba- bly most intensely impressed upon the nervous system, as well evidenced in the twitching of the muscles, the “lockjaw’” spasms of the trunk, legs and arms. These ultimately become grouped into a result which very closely resembles the attacks of epi- lepsy of “falling sickness.” Absinthe, while not truly (in the chemical sense) an alcohol proper,yst from actual demonstrations of its ef- focts upon animal life, higher and lower, gives results which are closely allied to these obtained in the inves- tigations of the effects of amylic alcohol. Perhaps one cf the most pe- culiar of these is one not unknown to chronic absinthites, viz. that which might be termed divided comscious- ness, where the victim performs some act which he had cafefully planned some time previously, and at present performs, but is absolutely uncon- scious that he is doing so. It being as if the brain had impressed upon the body something to be done, and then went asleep. The some time later, machine-like, carries out the impress, while the patient’s mind talees no notice of what is being done. This automatic seance is a weird delu- sion which makes the victim Pg strange enigma to the jurist and the psychologist. Absinthe, although mild a bemevolent lig: disguise, and its ad of Intoxicants is a criminal character, £ i «pe of the hideous zids man's inhumanity to m countiess thousands mourn. surely will the nation or the in d- ual which becomes sotted and de- based with absinthe realize in their degeneration that the bitterness of “wormwood” is Lrremedially their portion. If the sale of poisons is guarded and restricted, why should these deleterious agents be had forx the asking? FREDERICK WM. DEVELYN. v