Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) whisky.

1861

R.F. Burton City of the Saints 30: He can do nothing without whisky, which he loves to call tarantula-juice, strychnine, red-eye, corn-juice, Jersey lightning, leg-stretcher, ‘tangle-leg,’ and many other hard and grotesque names. [Ibid.] 112: Selling deleterious ‘strychnine’ to passing trains who can afford to pay $6 per gallon.

2. see quinine n.