Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/669

Rh spinach, or nettles. It is commonly adulterated. M. Derheims found it adulterated with sulphate of copper, blue vitriol, which substance is added in order to give the required greenish color or tint, as well as to afford a slight causticity, which to depraved tastes is considered the right thing to taste and swallow. M. Stanislas Martin stated that he found chloride of antimony, commonly called butter of antimony, as another adulteration used also to give the color. Chevalier doubts this latter adulteration, but the adulteration with the sulphate of copper is not disputed. The proportion of essence of wormwood to the alcohol is five drachms of the essence to one hundred quarts of alcohol. The action of absinthe on those who become habituated to its use is most deleterious. The bitterness increases the craving or desire, and the confirmed habitué is soon unable to take food until he is duly primed for it by the deadly provocative. On the nervous system the influence of the absinthium essence is different from the action of the alcohol. The absinthium acts rather after the manner of nicotine; but it is slower in taking effect than the alcohol which accompanies it into the organism. There is therefore felt by the drinker first the exciting relaxing influence of the alcohol, and afterward the constringing suppressing influence of the secondary and more slowly acting poison. The sufferer, for he must be so called, is left cold, tremulous, unsteady of movement, and nauseated. If his dose be large, these phenomena are exaggerated, and the voluntary muscles, bereft of the control of the will, are thrown into epileptiform convulsions, attended with unconsciousness and with an oblivion to all surrounding objects which I have known to last for six or seven hours. In the worst examples of poisoning from absinthe the person becomes a confirmed epileptic.

In addition to these general indications of evil there are certain local indications not less severe, not less dangerous. The effect which the absinthe exerts in a direct way on the stomach would alone be sufficiently pernicious. It controls for mischief the natural power of the stomach to secrete healthy digestive fluid. It interferes with the solvent power of that fluid itself, so that taken in what, is considered to be a moderate quantity, one or two wineglassfuls in the course of the day, it soon establishes in the victim subjected to it a permanent dyspepsia. The appetite is so perverted that all desire for food is quenched until the desire is feebly whipped up by another draught of the destroyer. In a word, a more consummate devil of destruction could not be concocted by the finest skill of science devoted to the worst of purposes than is concocted in this destructive agent, absinthe. It is doubly lethal, and ought to be put down peremptorily in all places where it is sold. Our magistrates have full power to deal with this poison, if they had the discretion and the courage to use their power. They could prohibit the license to all who sell the poison. Beyond this, there is another power that ought to come into play.