# Wormwood, oil of (Artemisia absinthium)

**Oglio d’assenzo**

**Known today as.** *Artemisia absinthium*.

Kind: Plant  
Qualities: Hot in the first degree, dry in the third (Galenic tradition).  
Poisoning: Convulsant terpenes (thujone, pinocamphone, camphor) (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/convulsant-terpenes)

## What did Canale use it for?

Rubbed on the stomach after vomiting; its tops in the cockerel (chs. 5–6).

## What does modern science say?

A stomach bitter. Its thujone is toxic in quantity. (In ch. 6 the powder Canale commends is of *artemisia*, mugwort, not wormwood.)

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **thujone**: 
- **absinthin**: the bitter principle

**Mechanism.** Thujone, a GABA-A antagonist; the bitters stimulate the stomach.

**Dose.** Absinthe of the nineteenth century held up to 260 mg of thujone per litre by some estimates, far less by others; the modern limit is 35 mg.

**Standing.** Approved in Europe as a traditional bitter for the appetite, with the thujone limited.

## What lore surrounds it?

Wormwood’s reputation now rests mainly on absinthe, the “green fairy” blamed for driving nineteenth-century artists and drinkers mad and often linked to Van Gogh. Analysis of sealed bottles from before 1915 found only small amounts of thujone in the genuine article, and toxicologists now lay absinthe’s notoriety chiefly on its high alcohol and the drinking it encouraged; some historians see the panic that banned it across Europe as closer to a moral crusade than a scientific finding.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Dioscorides.** Notes that ink mixed with wormwood keeps mice from gnawing the written page.

**Revelation 8:11.** The star called Wormwood falls on the waters and makes them bitter.

## Sources

- The History Blog, “The green fairy is really just hooch.”
- Lachenmeier, D. W., et al. (2008). “Chemical composition of vintage preban absinthe.” *Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry* 56.

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*Wormwood, oil of.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-09-25. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/wormwood-oil-of

Historical description, not medical advice.