DISTILLATION, 253 



nothing which deserved the name of apparatus. Dioscorides 

 says, that in distilling resin it is necessary to collect the vola- 

 tile particles upon cloths placed over the vase. 



The first navigators of the islands of the Archipelago 

 procured fresh water by receiving the vapor of salt water in 

 sponges arranged upon the vessels in which it was boiled. 

 (See Porta, Dc Distillatione, Cap. I.) 



The word distillation did not possess, amongst the an- 

 cients, any signification analogous to the import of it at the 

 present time : it was used by them as a generic term, com- 

 prehending filtration, fluxation, sublimation, and all the sim- 

 ilar operations to which we have assigned various names, and 

 for each of which we use a particular kind of apparatus. 

 (Jerome Rubeus, De Distillatione.) 



During the time of the republic and under the reign of 

 the kings, the Romans appear to have known nothing of 

 distilled spirit : Pliny, who wrote during the first century 

 of the Christian era, makes no mention of it ; he has left 

 us a very good treatise upon vinegar and wine, but he says 

 nothing of distilled liquor, though he speaks of wine in 

 all its forms : Galen, who lived a century after him, uses 

 the word distillation in the sense which I have mentioned 

 before. 



The art of distillation in all probability owes its origin to 

 the Arabians, who have, from time immemorial, formed ex- 

 tracts of the aroma of plants, and who brought their modes 

 of proceeding successively into Italy, Spain, and the south 

 of France : it even appears that the word alcmhic is found 

 for the first time in their writings, and has its origin in 

 their language ; it was used by them before the tenth centu- 

 ry ; for Avicenna, who lived at that time, made use of it to 

 explain the nature of the disease called catarrh, which he 

 compared to a distillation in which the stomach is the cucur- 

 bite, the head the cap, and the nose the beak by which the 

 humors flow out. 



Rhazes and Albticazin describe particular processes for 

 extracting the aromatic principle from plants ; it appears that 

 the steam was generally received into the cap of the still, 

 which was cooled by wet cloths. 



It is evident that Raymond Lully, who lived in the thir- 

 teenth century, was acquainted with distilled spirit and 

 alcohol, for in his work entitled Test amentum novissimum, 

 at page 2d of the Strasburg edition, 1571, he says : " Re- 

 cipe nigrum nigrius nigro (red wine) et distilla totam 

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