112 YEAST 



IV 



is brought in contact with a flame. The Al- 

 chemists called this volatile liquid, which they 

 obtained from wine, " spirits of wine," just as they 

 called hydrochloric acid "spirits of salt," and as 

 we, to this day, call refined turpentine " spirits of 

 turpentine." As the " spiritus," or breath, of a 

 man was thought to be the most refined and 

 subtle part of him, the intelligent essence of man 

 was also conceived as a sort of breath, or spirit ; 

 and, by analogy, the most refined essence of any- 

 thing was called its " spirit." And thus it has 

 come about that we use the same word for the 

 soul of man and for a glass of gin. 



At the present day, however, we even more 

 commonly use another name for this peculiar 

 liquid namely, " alcohol," and its origin is not 

 less singular. The Dutch physician, Van Helmont, 

 lived in the latter part of the sixteenth and the 

 beginning of the seventeenth century in the 

 transition period between alchemy and chemistry 

 and was rather more alchemist than chemist. 

 Appended to his " Opera Omnia," published in 1707, 

 there is a very needful "Clavis ad obscuriorum 

 sensum referendum," in which the following 

 passage occurs : 



"ALCOHOL. Chvmicis est liquor aut pulvis summfc subtili- 

 satus, vocabulo Orientalibns quoque, cum primis Habessinis, 

 familiari, quibus cohol speciatim pulverem impalpabilem ex 

 antimonio pro oculis tingendis denotat . . . Hodie autem, ob 

 analogiam, quivis pulvis tenerior, ut pulvis oculorum cancri. 



