106 POD OUTS. Tinea, 
theory the case of dry wood and green wood, which are 
unequally combustible according to the season when they 
are cut and the quantity of moisture they contain. - 
Let us remember that volatility and combustibility 
were then confounded, and described by the term sw/- 
phurity, “aterm which was applied in this sense in the 
time of STAHL at the commencement of the 18th century. 
These ideas go back even to the Greek Alchemists, who 
called every liquid volatile, and every sublimate given out 
from below to above, sulphurous water, or divine water.” 
Here we see the origin of those preparations so com- 
plicated and difficult to understand now-a-days, used by 
the older chemists. They tried to communicate to 
substances qualities which they lacked by adding to 
them certain matters in which these properties were 
supposed to be concentrated, thus sulphur was added to 
wine in order to facilitate as they believed, the manifesta- 
tion of its inflammable principle. The first savant of 
whom the name is known, who has written about alcohol, 
belongs to an age later than that of the composition of 
the writings alluded to. He was ARMAND DE VILLENEUVE) 
and is usually described as the author of the discovery, 
which he never pretended to be. He confined himself to 
speaking of alcohol as a preparation known in his time, 
and which had astonished him to a very great extent. 
ARMAND DE VILLENEUVE has recorded it in his work 
intituled ‘‘ On the preservation of youth,” a work written 
about 1309. 
“There is extraéted” says he, “ by the distillation of 
“ wine or of its lees, burning wine, also termed Lau de 
“ vie, water of life, which is the most subtil part of the 
“ wine,” 
0 vid aah A ROE 
tn RP. 
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