DISTILLATION. 257 



In another kind of apparatus, he placed a retort of copper 

 in a furnace ; the beak: of the retort passed into a close cask 

 filled with the liquor which he wished to distil ; a tube, fitted 

 into the upper part of the cask, was joined to a worm placed 

 in another cask, which was filled with cold water. By this 

 arrangement, the liquid contained in the first cask was con- 

 tinually falling into the retort, where it was heated, and thus 

 the whole contents of the cask were at length raised to a 

 sufficient degree of heat to produce distillation, and thus a 

 considerable volume of liquor was heated with a small fur- 

 nace, and at a trifling expense. Glauber applied this inge? 

 nious apparatus to heating baths. 



Philip James Sachs, in a work printed at Leipsic, in 1661, 

 under the title of Vitis vinifcrcB ejusque Partium Consideror 

 tio, &LC., has given us a complete and very valuable treatise 

 upon the culture of the vine, the nature of the soils, cli- 

 mates, and exposure adapted to the growth of it ; the 

 manner of making wine ; the comparative wealth of differ- 

 ent nations in this article of culture ; the differences and 

 resemblances of the several methods used amongst each 

 of them ; the distillation of wines, &c. In the last chapter 

 we see what will only detain us for a moment, that the an- 

 cients had many methods of extracting spirit of wine, 

 and that these consisted entirely either in vaporizing it at 

 a gentle heat, depriving wine of its water by calcined alum, 

 putting moistened cloths over the alembic, placing ice upon 

 the cap of the alembic, that the most subtle vapors might 

 not escape, or, finally, in terminating the boiler by a very 

 long neck. 



The same author speaks also of the quintessence, 

 quinta essentia, and gives various modes of extracting it. 

 ** Ut vero spiritus vini alcool exaltetur, variis modis tenta- 

 runt chimici ; quidam multis repetitis cohobationibus ; ali- 

 qui, instrumentorum altitudine; alii, spongia alambici ros- 

 trum obturante, ut, aqua retenta, soli spiritus transirent; 

 non multi, flamma lampadis, ut ad summum gradum depu- 

 rationis exaltaretur." 



Moses Char as, in his Pharmacopoiia, printed in 1676, 

 describes the apparatus of Lefebvre, and adds some im- 

 provements to it ; he adapts a refrigerator to the cap. We 

 may still see, in the Elemens de Chimie of Berchusen; 

 printed in 1718, and in those of Boerhaave, which appeared 

 at Paris in 1733, several processes detailed, by which very 

 pure alcohol may be obtained at a single distillation; but 

 22* 



