THE HOUSE OF PERNOD AND SONS
It is primarily absinthe which is the target of their efforts;
it is it upon which they hang their blanket accusation,
and which they proclaim as the cause of all the evils
that afflict humanity. In addition to the reprobation which
they slap other alcoholic drinks, absinthe, if you believe
certain characters among them, is guilty of special
crimes for which they create special columns in the
newspapers; by the fact of the plants which compose it,
it apparently constitutes a true poison and, in support of
these statements, they announce strange recipes
containing all manner of ingredients, which have only
one error: to be without any connection to the
manufacture of absinthe, at least as it is practiced in the
House of Pernod Fils.
However laudable the objectives of the absinthe
detractors, it doesn't authorize them to disguise the
truth and to represent the drink as the product of a
malevolent chemistry, whereas its components are
honest plants, all well known, whose beneficial
properties are universally admitted. How could the
union of these inoffensive or salutary plants produce
harmful effects? That, the adversaries of the green
liqueur forget to explain, which is usually the case when
passion derails logic.
It is scientists, however, we must say, who want to
discover toxic properties in various of the plants used to
make absinthe;their reports made a certain amount of noise a few years
ago and the Academy of Medicine resounded with the tumult
of their discussions.
