ALCOHOL 569 



de vie." Indeed, some believe that "eau de vie" curtails rather than 

 prolongs life, and some there are who go so far as to maintain that 

 " eau de vie " should be called " eau de mort." 3 But this is aside from 

 the subject ! It is of interest, however, to note that out of the opinion 

 expressed by Arnaldo de Villaneuva probably grew the prevailing belief 

 in Europe in the efficacy of the daily use of brandy, and to the latter 

 may be attributed the custom of the mint julep or so-called old-age 

 drink prevalent in parts of our own south. 



Alcohol Discovered in Substances other than Wine 



Man, seeking ways of producing alcohol from substances other than 

 wine, early made the important observation that fermentation and the 

 production of alcoholic liquids go hand in hand. This discovery, as 

 time passed, became common knowledge, with the result that fermented 

 liquids from different sources came to be looked upon as characteristic 

 national drinks — thus in France mine from grapes, in Jamaica rum 

 from cane, in Eussia vodka from rye, in Japan saki from rice, in Ger- 

 many beer from barley and in America whiskey from Indian corn. 



But some substances long used in the formation of alcohol, unlike 

 the juice of grapes, are themselves unfermentable. Some of these we 

 shall consider more in detail. 



Common or cane sugar, although of itself incapable of undergoing 

 alcoholic fermentation, by the action of a ferment invertase, takes up a 

 molecule of water, splitting into glucose and fructose, both of which 

 are fermentable. Thus cane sugar, C 12 H 22 11 -f- H 2 0, becomes 

 C 6 H 12 6 (glucose) and C 6 H 12 6 (fructose). From the fermentation 

 of glucose and fructose alcohol results. 



The starch of cereal grains when converted into fermentable sugar 

 likewise becomes an effective source for alcoholic fermentation. It has 

 long been known that a starch paste, to which malt or malt extract 

 (containing diastase) has been added, becomes transformed into a 

 sugar maltose. Now maltose itself is not subject to alcoholic fer- 

 mentation, and so it must be acted upon by another ferment, maltase. 

 This converts the maltose into dextrose and glucose, the latter of which 

 we have seen to be produced in the case of cane sugar. 



In 1837 Cahours employed potatoes as a source for alcoholic fer- 

 mentation. The starch of potatoes is insoluble in cold water, but upon 

 heating it in the presence of dilute sulphuric acid the starch is con- 

 verted into fermentable sugar. In this process in addition to the ethyl 

 alcohol produced a considerable amount of one of the higher alcohols, 

 amyl alcohol, was discovered. 



Two years earlier than the discovery of amyl alcohol another alcohol 

 was obtained. This was produced not by fermentation, but by the 

 destructive distillation of wood, and was therefore called wood or methyl 

 alcohol. 



8 To be seen on the walls of one of the well-known sanatoria of France. 



