88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 







The decisive step in the knowledge of distillation was taken in 

 Egypt. There were invented the first real distilling apparatus 

 during the first centuries of the Christian era. They are described 

 precisely in the works of Zosimus, an author of the third century, 

 from the technical treatises of two women chemists named Cleo- 

 patra and Mary. In the margin of a Greek text of St. Mark are 

 the drawings of the apparatus, and they agree exactly with the 

 author's descriptions. The apparatus consists of a boiler or bal- 

 loon-shaped receiver, in which the liquid was put ; but the cover 

 was replaced by a large tube topping the balloon, and ending 

 above in a cap shaped like an inverted balloon, to serve as a con- 

 denser. The cap was furnished with lateral conical tubes inclined 

 downward, which were intended to collect the condensed liquid 

 and allow it to flow out into small bottles. All the essential parts 

 of a distilling apparatus are here defined. These lateral tubes 

 and their recipients constitute the chief improvement, and are 

 what constitutes the alembic. Among the distinctive character- 

 istics of the primitive alembic described by Zosimus is the multi- 

 plicity of the abductor tubes. He distinguishes between two- 

 beaked and three-beaked alembics. The flow of vapor was simul- 

 taneous, though there were several beaks, and condensation took 

 place in two or three receivers at once. Another figure represents 

 an alembic with a single beak, to which a large copper tube was 

 attached. An alembic described by Synesius, an author of the 

 fourth century, and figured in less ancient manuscripts, shows the 

 boiler with its cap, furnished with a single tube, the whole appa- 

 ratus being heated in a marine bath. This form varied but little 

 till the sixteenth century. The alembic passed from the Greco- 

 Egyptian experimenters to the Arabs without any notable change. 

 The Arabs were not, therefore, the inventors of distillation, as has 

 been too often affirmed. In chemistry, as in astronomy and medi- 

 cine, they merely reproduced the apparatus and processes of the 

 Greeks, their masters, adding a few improvements in details. It 

 is a mistake to trace the discovery of distillation and of alcohol 

 to Rases, or Abulcasis, or other Arabian authors; the verified 

 texts have at least furnished me no indication of that kind. In 

 fact, Rases (tenth century), in the passages cited in support of 

 that opinion, speaks only of vinous liquids or false wines ob- 

 tained by the fermentation of sugar, honey, and rice; liquids, 

 some of which, like hydromel, were known to the ancients. But 

 there is nothing about distilling them, or extracting a more 

 active principle, in any passage in Rases that I am acquainted 

 with. In the pharmaceutical works attributed to Abulcasis or 

 Abulcasim, a Spanish doctor of Cordova, who died in 1107, we 

 only find a distilling apparatus for preparing rose-water which 

 did not differ in principle from those of the old Grecian alche- 



