1892 Drinks of the world

DRINI^S.

163

commonly called a liqueur.

Its base is an alcoholate,

composed of anise, is flavoured with wormwood, a species of artemisia, and other plants containing absinthin. It is said to be commonly coloured with indigo and sulphate of coppen It is prepared chiefly in Switzerland, but much of it is made at Bordeaux. Arnold de Villeneuve, in his medical treatise, written in Latin, On the preservation of youth and the retarda- tion of age, has a sermon upon Golden water. " I have not," he says, " read the properties of this water in books of distinguished authority, but it is to be presumed that, if it exists, it is so sublime a work that they have concealed the method of its preparation, and have even refused to mention its name. Of gold, however, they have spoken, and set it among cordial medicines. They have praised it for the comforting of the heart and for the palliation of leprosy. It is possible that since we every day find things diversified by alter* ation of substance, acquiring the operations of those other things into which they have been transformed, so out of wine may be made a water of life very differ- ent from wine both in colour and in substance, in effect and in operation. And the doubt here is, not about the fact, but how it is brought about. That the bodies of all metals may be reduced into water by the in* genuity of mankind, experience allows us not to ques- tion ; but the operation and nature of those things by which this end is obtained it is no easy matter to dis* cover." This golden water was originally nothing else than coriander, and fennel. It