On Alcohol or spirituous Liquors. 278 
centigrade): this liquor, when at such a degree of lightness, is 
described by Baumé as highly rectified spirit of wine. “Its 
physical and chemical properties, in addition to-its levity, consist 
in being perfectly diaphanous, very volatile, very inflammable, 
burning without smoke, having an agreeable smell, a hot. taste; 
and it does not alter the aqueous tinctures of turnsole, or of the 
petals of violets.” 
Such are the characters which ought to distinguish every al- 
eoholic extract of wine, cider, perry, rum, &c. when well recti- 
fied, deprived of water, and of the malic acid which we meet 
with almost always in weak spirituous liquors. 
We may, by means of salt or alkaline and earthy matters, bring 
alcohol to a superior degree of rectification, to the point of 
marking 46 or more in the areometer : but it is clear that these 
substances act more or less on the elements of alcohol during di- 
stillation ; for the liquor which results has new properties, since it 
acts differently with the reagents from the spirit of wine obtained 
without intermedium, such as that prepared by Lemery’s process, 
which we shall henceforth call pure alcohol. 
Lowitz, Richter, and other chemists successively suggested 
various substances, which have a great atfinity for water, in order 
completely to dephlegmate alcohol. In short, if the substances 
mixed with spirit of wine, only take up the aqueous principle 
which it contained in excess before it attained its last stage of 
rectification, we may then conceive what immense advantages, 
by these processes, spirituous fluids might confer on the arts and 
commerce in general * ; but the series of experiments about to 
be detailed will remove all uncertainty on this head, and enable 
us in future to appreciate the means hitherto employed in the 
rectification of alcohol. We shall show that every saline ad- 
mixture changes spirit of wine more or less, either by acting on its 
constituent principles, or by being dissolved, or even interposed 
in a state of minute division. 
The substances which have been alternately employed in these 
operations, or the dephlegmation of spirit of wine, are; Ist, the 
two fixed alkalis; 2d, the muriate of lime; 3d, the muriate of 
potash; 4th, quick- lime 3 dth, calcined gypsum; 6th, sulphate 
of soda, and latterly, acetate of potash fused and reduced to 
powder. 
In consequence I successively distilled pure spirit of wine (from 
* Tt would be highly useful, as is now the case with most of the acids, 
the sulphuric in particular (the highest degree of concentration of which it 
is capable being known), if the maximwn of lightness or rectification, of al- 
cohol was also fixed in an invariable manner: but in order to avoid err ors, 
the hygrometers ought to be graduated alike in every country. Ma 
Vol. 43. No. 192. April 1814. Ss 38 to” 
