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Absinthe, the forerunner of all anise-based drinks, originated in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean. It first made its appearance in western Europe when a Dr. Pierre Ordinaire, fleeing from the French Revolution, set up as a travelling physician in and around the Swiss border town of Covet and started peddling an elixir of anise, fennel, camomile, coriander and wormwood, distilled in alcohol. First sold commercially as Pernod, absinthe was high in alcoholic strength (65-75 per cent) yet also dry and refreshing. The French army, returning from Algeria in 1830, said that diluting it with water gave protection from malaria and it was soon taken up by smart French society. It was also embraced by radical artists and writers, among them Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud and Toulouse-Lautrec, partly to flout polite society, partly because it was believed (like hashish and opium) to stimulate artistic creativity. In the late 1870s, however, it lost public favour in France in the face of opposition from the authorities and acquired a reputation, not unlike gin in 18th-century England, as a weird, mind-altering, hallucinogenic, shamanic drug, the tipple of madmen and degenerates. Van Gogh for instance, reputedly drank it before cutting off his ear. But the main concern of the authorities was drinking by females and the working class. In 1915, fearing that it would undermine France's fighting in World War I, the French senate banned the sale of absinthe in France. Other countries followed suit but not Britain, where absinthe continued to be part of the cocktail culture of the 1920s (it figures in Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall of 1928) nor Denmark, Spain or the Czech Republic, which began to export it again after the 'velvet revolution' of 1989. The author sees absinthe as a much-maligned and even demonized drink. His book is an erudite and elegantly written history of the cultural rituals of absinthe drinking and in particular its association with the Decadents of 1890s Paris. He also discusses the recently discovered pharmacology of how absinthe actually works on the nervous system and adds an appendix with excerpts from selected classic texts on the drink. An excellent guide to a notorious spirit. (Kirkus UK)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Fortean Times, February, 2002
literate and cheerfully squalid... a model of popular cultural history... brilliant
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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71% buy the item featured on this page: The Dedalus Book of Absinthe £5.49 |
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7% buy The Decadent Handbook£10.48 |
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