Notes & Queries Archive
REPLY1850

Eisell

By J. R. N.

The attempt of your very learned correspondent, MR. SINGER, to show that "eisell" was *wormwood*, is, I fear, more ingenious than satisfactory. It is quite true that wormwood wine and beer were ordinary beverages, as wormwood bitters are now; but Hamlet would have done little in challenging Laertes to a draught of wormwood. As to "eisell," we have the following account of it in the "Via Recta ad Vitam longam, or a Plaine Philosophical Discourse of the Nature, Faculties, and Effects of all such Things as by way of Nourishments, and Dieteticale Observations make for the Preservation of Health, &…

Topics: Victorian Literature, Historical Beverages, Etymology

Locations: Bathe, North-Petherton, Bridgewater, Somersetshire, London