FRANCE: End of a Dynasty

War has not been kind to the descendants of Henri-Louis Pernod, that Frenchman who in 1797 gave to the world the aperitif known as absinthe. Henri-Louis used the formula of a Dr. Ordinaire, who was celebrated up & down the Alps for cures effected with mountain herbs. One of these herbs was wormwood, an excellent stomachic, which by the time of World War I had also acquired a reputation as an aphrodisiac, thereby helping to enrich the firm of Pernod Fils, leading manufacturer of absinthe. In 1914 the publisher of a small Paris newspaper started a campaign to prohibit absinthe,...

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