Government and the more enlightened classes recognize the perils of this growing evil but are powerless to stop it." .
What this means is that the revenue the drink was creating was overshadowing the social problems it was thought to have caused. The main problem was that people who drank a lot were considered to develop an ailment known as absinthism; a syndrome which was thought to have occurred when an individual would drink heavily. Symptoms for these Absinthists were thought to include, among other things, addiction, convulsions, hallucinations and death. Absinthe is thought to have been initially created in Switzerland near the end of the 18th century; the first recipes are believed to have mixed wormwood, as well as angelica, hyssop and other herbs for flavour. These ingredients had been known to serve as medicine for various ailments for many centuries, the chief herb, Artemisia Absinthium (wormwood), was in particular known for its digestive and parasite-killing properties. The principle ingredient in absinthe has been known throughout history to have properties of a "magical" nature. Later on, scientists worked out that wormwood has a drug known as Thujone. Researchers have long been debating whether or not there are psychotropic effects or not. Dating back to the age of the Egyptians, wormwood was used as a medicinal substance. It grows naturally in Europe and has long been intertwined with notions of mysticism and magic for the characteristics of what happens, or is believed to happen when the substance is ingested. It is thought that the original recipe was created by the two sisters, Henriod. Some say that they sold the recipe to a French physician named Dr. Ordinaire who was the first to market it in 1792. Another Frenchman named Henri Louis Pernod, in 1797, began distilling and also began to market his product. Before long, the French government gave rations of Absinthe to their soldiers fighting in Algeria as an anti-malaria agent and as a common health tonic in general.