Santonin
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Santonin is a drug which was widely used in the past as an anthelminthic, a drug that expels parasitic worms (helminths) from the body, by either killing or stunning them. Santonin was formerly listed in U.S. and British pharmacopoeia but has fallen out of use with the development of safer ascaricides and is no longer registered as a drug in most countries.
Santonin was an agent which (compared to more modern anthelminthic drugs) was very complicated to use and entailed rather serious risk to the patient. Nearly every formulary and herbal which lists santonin or santonin-containing plants lists the real risk of yellow vision and of fatal reactions; even small doses of santonin cause disturbances of vision, usually yellow vision or perhaps green (xanthopsia or chromatopsia). It was this side effect that was cited by Edmund Husserl.
Santonin and absinthe
While absinthe is certainly more infamous for its content of thujone, the liquor does also contain small amounts of santonin. It has been speculated by some parties that Impressionist art—in particular, Van Gogh's artwork—may have been inspired not by thujone and its presumed psychotropic effects, but on the "yellow vision" or xanthopsia which is a known side effect of santonin. This has been disputed, however, most notably by Arnold and Loftus (1991) who have noted the santonin content would have been insufficient to cause xanthopsia.
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