574 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fluence on the nervous system ; so that in small doses it exhilarates, 

 while in larger it stupefies, and may even destroy life. 



Moreover, if the original fluid is put into a still, and heated for a 

 while, the first and last product of its distillation is simple water ; 

 while, when the altered fluid is subjected to the same process, the 

 matter which is first condensed in the receiver is found to be a clear, 

 volatile substance, which is lighter than water, has a pungent taste and 

 smell, possesses the intoxicating powers of the fluid in an eminent 

 degree, and takes fire the moment it is brought in contact with a flame. 

 The alchemists called this volatile liquid, which they obtained from 

 wine, " spirits of wine," just as they called hydrochloric acid " spirits 

 of salt," and as we, to this day, call refined turpentine " spirits of 

 turpentine." As the " spiritus," or breath, of a man was thought to 

 be the most refined and subtle part of him, the intelligent essence of 

 man was also conceived as a sort of breath, or spirit ; and, by analogy, 

 the most refined essence of any thing was called its " spirit." And 

 then it has come about that we use the same word for the soul of 

 man and for a glass of gin. 



At the present day, however, we even more commonly use another 

 name for this peculiar liquid namely, " alcohol," and its origin is 

 not less singular. The Dutch physician, Van Helmont, lived in 

 the latter part of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth 

 century in the transition period between alchemy and chemistry 

 and was rather more alchemist than chemist. Appended to his " Opera 

 Omnia," published in 1707, there is a very needful " Clavis ad obscu- 

 riorum sensum referandum," in which the following passage occurs : 



Alcohol In chemistry, a liquid or powder of extreme subtilty, from an East- 

 ern word, coTiol (or, better, kohl), used familiarly chiefly atHabessus, to denote an 

 impalpable powder of antimony for painting the eyebrows. Alcohol is now 

 used, by analogy, to express any very fine powder, such as powder for the eye- 

 brows higbly subtilized ; and well-rectified spirits are said to be alcoholized. 



Robert Boyle similarly speaks of a fine powder as " alcohol ; " and 

 so late as the middle of the last century the English lexicographer, 

 Nathan Bailey, defines " alcohol " as " the pure substance of anything 

 separated from the more gross, a very fine and impalpable powder, 

 or a very pure, well-rectified spirit." But, by the time of the pub- 

 lication of Lavoisier's " Traite Elementaire de Chimie," in 1789, the 

 term " alcohol," " alkohol," or " alkool " (for it is spelt in all three 

 ways), which Van Helmont had applied primarily to a fine powder, 

 and only secondarily to spirits of wine, had lost its primary meaning 

 altogether ; and, from the end of the last century until now, it has, I 

 believe, been used exclusively as the denotation of spirits of wine, and 

 bodies chemically allied to that substance. 



The process which gives rise to alcohol in a saccharine fluid is 

 known to us as " fermentation," a term based upon the apparent 



