xvi Proceedings. {February yth, i8gg. 



flowers of sulphur, and so on. So late as 1812, Davy, in his 

 "Chemical Philosophy," says: "I have already referred to the 

 alcohol of sulphur." But as this reference to the finely powdered 

 state began to die out, so did the idea of sublimation, and, by an 

 easy transference, that of distillation gradually usurped its place. 

 For example, Libarius, in 1594, had already used the expression 

 'alcohol vini' for spirits of wine, and in the Philosophical Trans- 

 actions for 1672 we find it in English as 'alcohol of wine.' In 

 modern Spanish some of the older meanings are still in vogue ; 

 thus, ' Alcohol ' in that language means either antimony or recti- 

 fied spirits of wine ; ' alcoholado,' spoken of cattle, means darker 

 round the eyes than over the rest of the body, as though by the 

 application of kohl ; ' Alcoholador ' means one employed in 

 rectifying spirits, or who paints or dyes with antimony; 

 ' Alcoholar,' most instructive of all, combines the three meanings, 

 viz., to paint or dye with antimony, to rectify spirits, or to reduce 

 to an impalpable powder. Once having touched upon antimony, 

 we come upon another philological discussion in connection with 

 that word itself. The remarks in the Dictionary are as follows : 

 " Probably, like other terms of Alchemy, a corruption of some 

 Arabic word re-fashioned so as to wear a Greek or Latin aspect ; 

 perhaps of the Arabic name uthmud, othmod, latinized as athi- 

 modium, atimodium,atimonium,antimonium. The earlier form of 

 the Arabic is isthmid, in which Littre suggests an adaptation 

 (quasi isthimraid) of the Greek crTijifu'h-a, a variant of (rTLUfxi, 

 whence also the Latin stibium. If this conjecture be substantiated, 

 antimonium and stibium will be transformations of the same 

 word." The word stibium, it may be remarked, comes directly 

 from the Greek orZ/x^t, which means the same thing. 



' Ammonia ' has not been traced back previous to Bergman 

 (1782), but ammoniac, armoniack, and several other variants are 

 found centuries earlier. Thus Chaucer in the Canon^s Yeoman^s 

 Tale, written about 1386, which, by the way, contains a large 

 number of chemical terms, speaks of " Arsenick, sal-ammoniac, 

 and brimstone." 



Some very interesting references are found under the heading 



