Absinthe

Absinthe is a distilled beverage made from the herb (medicinal plant). Anise, fennel and other herbs can also enter the composition. It was first created and used as a medicine by Dr. Pierre Ordinaire, a French physician who lived in Couvet, Switzerland, around 1792.

Absinthe was especially popular in France, especially in connection with Parisian artists from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, until its ban in 1915, having gained some popularity with its legalization in several countries. It is also popularly known as a green fairy (la fée verte) because of a supposed hallucinogenic effect. Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Allan Poe, Aleister Crowley and Ernest Hemingway were fans of the green fairy.