The medicine, called ASAQ, is a pill combining artemisinin, invented in China using sweet wormwood and hailed as a miracle malaria drug, with amodiaquine, an older drug that still works in many malarial areas.
This data allowed selecting the optimal range of non-cytotoxic concentrations of each plant extract (up to 100 mg/L arnica and 500 mg/L wormwood), used in further experiments.
Assuming you didn't get too sick downing ungodly amounts of this stuff in Prague, you should think twice about bringing the green fairy stateside; absinthe gets its potent kick from thujone, a chemical compound found in the wormwood used during distillation.
Sweet wormwood is used by Chinese herbalists to treat fever.
(It was believed that thujone in wormwood, long used in its manufacture, caused madness).
This shrub, commonly known as white wormwood or desert wormwood, is largely used in folk medicine and as a culinary herb.
Vaginal steam baths come from an ancient Korean tradition called chai-yok, which uses mugwort and wormwood to cleanse the vagina.
Use much less wormwood, preferable petite (to minimize bitterness).
After a few tries, Mr. Winters found that grand wormwood was best used in just the first step of absinthe making, when it is infused into grape brandy along with anise and fennel and then distilled, so its bitterness could be left behind in the still.
Artemisinins, derived from the Chinese herb qinghausu or wormwood, have been used by Chinese traditional healers for many years but have become available to western practioners only in recent years.
