While absinthe will always be remembered as what caused Vincent Van Gogh to bust into seizures and cut his own ear off, there is something else depressing that absinthe is related to. People are attempting to put the blame of a murder case on the shoulders of absinthe. This is something which has been talked about for over a century now and has been dubbed as the ‘absinthe murder’.
The Murder
Jean Lanfray was a man who got really drunk one night in the year 1905. However, it was believed that he only consumed 2 glasses of absinthe but the blame still rests on absinthe for what he was about to do. The intoxicated man eventually killed his wife that night and the case received the name being the ‘absinthe murder’ because everyone thought that the two glasses of absinthe caused him to become enraged and kill his wife. Most people believed that the absinth was to blame because of how bad it was being portrayed at the time. Everyone was saying that absinthe was a dangerous alcoholic drink to consume and it will make people go crazy.
The End Result
Testing was done on the contents of absinthe to see if it was safe. A study was done where the extracts of wormwood were intravenously shot into an animal and the activities were monitored. Absinthisim became a disease after the studies concluded. In 1912, absinthe was banned in the United States of America and France followed three years later.
The absinth murder which was really caused because the man was already intoxicated and very mad has made absinthe look like a bad drink for many years. This one case is what brought absinthe to being banned in many countries. The absinthe murder is what killed the legality of absinthe. |
