274 On Alcohol or spirituous Liquors. 
38 to 40 degrees) with these different salts, following precisely 
the processes pointed out. ; 
- This alcohol, when rectified with the alkali of tartar or of soda, 
either caustic or partly carbonated and very dry, acquires in truth 
three or four degrees of lightness: after this proof, its smell be- 
comes more subtile; but it loses its natural mellowness. It 
greens the aqueous tincture of the petals of the violet: in addi- 
tion it abundantly precipitates the water taken from wells charged 
with calcareous sulphate; effects which demonstrate that spirit of 
wine rectified over alkalis is altered in its elements, or receives in 
addition some heterogeneous principle. 
Pure alcohol rectified over the muriates of lime and potash 
slightly calcined, acquires also levity, and even more than with 
the alkalis, but the liquor produced by it also contracts new pro- 
perties. These do not belong to good alcohol: they give it a 
hot, bitter, pungent taste. It is easy to demonstrate the pre- 
sence of the salts employed in this rectification, either by am- 
monia, or by the nitrates of silver and mercury, &c. 
Quick-lime coarsely pulverized and mixed with pure alcohol, 
creates sufficient heat to permit a portion of the fluid to distil over 
without employing external heat: this first product gives cer- 
tain signs of alkalinity, by acting sensibly on the aqueous juice 
of the black plum. The residue distilled in the vapour-bath 
contracts more and more the pungent property, and instan- 
taneously becomes turbid on mixing with it common water satu- 
rated with carbonic acid: it is easy by putting the liquor in a 
large conical glass, to perceive at the bottom after it rests two 
days a remarkable quantity of carbonate of lime, &c. 
Pure alcohol distilled over calcined gypsum also acquires light- 
ness, less however than with the four foregoing substances: the 
spirit of wine produced contracts a peculiarly disagreeable smell : 
besides, it renders turbid the infusion of flowers of red poppy, 
whereas pure alcohol heightens the colour of it: it hkewise com- 
municates a shade of dead leaves to the tincture of violets,—pro- 
perties which indicate its alteration, or the presence of a foreign 
body in the spirituous fluid. 
Glauber’s salts, or sulphate of soda calcined and deprived com- 
pletely of its water of crystallization, seemed an excellent inter- 
medium for dephlegmating alcohol without acting on its ele- 
mentary principles. I repeated this operation several times with 
success, and always obtained, by employing a part of this salt 
pulverized over two of liquid at 36, 37 and 38 degrees, a spirit 
of wine marking from 38 to 40 degrees, and which had all the 
properties of that prepared without any intermedium: but not- 
withstanding its agreeable smell, it held in solution a small quan- 
tity of the saline substance employed in its distillation, for pure 
barytes 
