Was this popular spirit of the Belle Époque actually responsible for the hallucinations, wild rollicking and even murder for which it was blamed? It is likely that the wormwood in absinthe ...

So our host filled a half dozen tasting cups with a wild chartreuse color liquid ... To make the absinthe, he needed anise, wormwood, and fennel, and he sourced the wormwood from Poland.

Absinthe beguiled Van Gogh, Degas, Picasso, Wilde—and a modern-day swindler who tricked fellow devotees of the drink.