123 DR. R. ANGUS SMITH ON THE 



and koumiss comes from the horse-feeding plains to Russia 

 and the West. I do not know the history of the word ; 

 but the likeness is remarkable^ and the character likewise. 



People may say that I have imagined something ; but it 

 is easy to find out what is imagined and what is not. The 

 statements or facts are not deniable ; one can only deny 

 the connexions which have been made. 



I am going, however, to add a little which may be less 

 certain to some minds. Certain people are called very 

 reliable — those who never reason, but merely collect facts : 

 they are safe, but never go far ; we could not learn much 

 if we had only our touch instead of eyesight. Let us spe- 

 culate a little. When we look for ''^the elixir of life ^' among 

 early alchemists, we find the introduction of silver and 

 mercury into its preparation ; and I will not inquire who 

 was the earliest who did this ; but if we go far enough 

 back in point of space and time, we find the '' elixir of life " 

 to have been an intoxicating liquid. The long time of pre- 

 paration, the wandering search after a proper heat (which 

 in some cases, at least, was quite that of fermentation), and 

 the confused ideas of distillation put into bombastic words 

 among the alchemists lead me to suppose that they had tra- 

 ditions of the preparation which were lost as to clearness, 

 whilst they point towards the formation and distillation of 

 alcohol. In the far East the precious liquid is simply an 

 intoxicating one; the peculiarity of the Asclepias found 

 by chemists exists to a small extent only, and did not show 

 itself Avith sufficient prominence to be noticed in the East. 



This confused idea of early men, who, when they w^re 

 excited by drunkenness, fancied themselves elevated above 

 common life, and imagined that if they could obtain enough 

 of the liquid the elevation would last for ever, passed 

 readily into the notion of an elixir ; and we see that the 

 gods themselves used it. This idea kept its place even in 



