A light infusion of the tops of the plant, used fresh, is excellent for all disorders of the stomach, creating an appetite, promoting digestion and preventing sickness after meals, but it is said to produce the contrary effect if made too strong.
The flowers, dried and powdered, are most effectual as a vermifuge, and used to be considered excellent in agues. The essential oil of the herb is used as a worm-expeller, the spirituous extract being preferable to that distilled in water. The leaves give out nearly the whole of their smell and taste both to spirit and water, but the cold water infusions are the least offensive.

​Wormwood

​(Artemisia absinthium)

Perennial, 3-4 feet. Is best raised from seed sown in
drills 6 inches apart, putting in seed half an inch deep.
Plant outvseedlings a foot apart. Full sun or part shade.
The plant was of some importance among the Ancient and the Mexicans, who celebrated their great festival of the Goddess of Salt by a ceremonial dance of women, who wore on their heads garlands of Wormwood.
With the exception of Rue, Wormwood is the bitterest herb known, but it is very wholesome and used to be in much request by brewers for use instead of hops. 'As bitter as Wormwood' is a very Ancient proverb.
The leaves resist putrefaction, and have been on that account a principal ingredient in antiseptic fomentations.
​The intensely bitter, tonic and stimulant qualities have caused Wormwood not only to be an ingredient in medicinal preparations, but also to be used in various liqueurs, of which absinthe is the chief, the basis of absinthe being absinthol, extracted from Wormwood.