On Alcohol or spirituous Liquors. 279 
are composed of the same radicals, the proportions of which are 
known, they ought to have the same properties, the same taste, 
and act in the same way with the reagents, being well purified, 
and having attained their highest degree of rectification. 
This alcoholic identity may exist within the range of physzco- 
chemical possibilities: but I candidly own that I was never 
thoroughly convinced of it; for notwithstanding numerous ex- 
periments for twenty-five years past on the alcoholic fluids pro- 
duced by wine, cyder, rum, cherry brandy, fermented grain, &c. 
I constantly remarked that all these liquids, when.distilled and 
rectified several times even in the vapour-bath without mixture, 
or the intermedium of charcoal as recommended by Lowitz, and 
brought to their highest degree of spzritwosity, still exposed their 
origin, and that it was always easy to say which alcohol came 
from wiue, cider, perry, rum, &c. *. 
The odour which issues from the various kinds of alcohol when 
rubbed on the hands, the organ of taste, in diluting these fluids 
in a sufficient quantity of warm water, and their mixture with a 
little sulphuric acid, are the most simple as well as the most cer- 
tain methods for instantly unmasking the peculiar aroma of each 
kind, and the substance from which it has been produced. 
There exists a term, however, at which all these alcohols cease 
to be cognizable; but they are then denaturalizxed, if we may so 
express ourselves, and this happens in their etherification. 
In fact, the extremely volatile odorous and expansive fluid, 
long known by the name of ether of Frobenius, which chemists 
prepare by distilling equal parts of alcohol at 36 or 37 degrees 
and concentrated sulphuric acid, may be made with every kind of 
spirituous liquor; and when the product which results from it is 
well rectified, and marks from 36 to 60 degrees in Baumeé’s areo- 
meter, then I do not hesitate to assert that it is impossible to 
ascertain to what kind of alcohol ether thus prepared belongs. 
It would seem that at the moment of the affusion of the acid 
over the spirituous fluid, the aroma which characterizes it is va- 
porized or destroyed by the dissociation or alteration undergone 
by the elements which compose it *. 
I may add that the various alcohols at an equal degree of veri- 
fication do not always produce one and the same quantity of 
* By the effect of the reaction of the concentrated acid on alcohols, and 
by the aroma which emanates from it, we may always distinguish the kind 
of ardent spirit employed in this operation: but as soon as the mixture is 
half cooled, then the liquors which result from it are perfectly identical, as 
to their smell alone; but their colour is more or less intense: this seems 
to depend on the different proportions of the oleaginous aromatic principle 
or characterizes each kind of alcohol, and which is acted upon by the 
acid, 
$4 ether. 
