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 ALCOFOBADO, MARIANNA (1640–1723), Portuguese authoress, writer of the Letters of a Portuguese Nun, was the daughter of a landed proprietor in Alemtejo. Beja, her birthplace, was the chief garrison town of that province, itself the principal theatre of the twenty-eight years' war with Spain that followed the Portuguese revolution of 1640, and her widowed father, occupied with administrative and military commissions, placed Marianna in her childhood in the wealthy convent of the Conception for security and education. She made her profession as a Franciscan nun at sixteen or earlier, without any real vocation, and lived a routine life in that somewhat relaxed house until her twenty-fifth year, when she met Noel Bouton. This man, afterwards marquis de Chamilly, and marshal of France, was one of the French officers who came to Portugal to serve under the great captain, Frederick, Count Schomberg, the re-organizer of the Portuguese army. During the years 1665–1667 Chamilly spent much of his time in and about Beja, and probably became acquainted with the Alcoforado family through Marianna’s brother, who was a soldier. Custom then permitted religious to receive and entertain visitors, and Chamilly, aided by his military prestige and some flattery, found small difficulty in betraying the trustful nun. Before long their intrigue became known and caused a scandal, and to avoid the consequences Chamilly deserted Marianna and withdrew clandestinely to France. The letters to her lover which have earned her renown in literature were written between December 1667 and June 1668, and they described the successive stages of faith, doubt and despair through which she passed. As a piece of unconscious psychological self-analysis, they are unsurpassed; as a product of the Peninsular heart they are unrivalled. These five short letters written by Marianna to “expostulate her desertion” form one of the few documents of extreme human experience, and reveal a passion which in the course of two centuries has lost nothing of its heat. Perhaps their dominant note is reality, and, sad reading as they are from the moral standpoint, their absolute candour, exquisite tenderness and entire self-abandonment have excited the wonder and admiration of great men and women in every age, from Madame de Sevigné to W. E. Gladstone. There are signs in the fifth letter that Marianna had begun to conquer her passion, and after a life of rigid penance, accompanied by much suffering, she died at the age of eighty-three. The letters came into the possession of the comte de Guilleragues, director of the Gazette de France, who turned them into French, and they were published anonymously in Paris in January 1669. A Cologne edition of the same year stated that Chamilly was their addressee, which is confirmed by St Simon and Duclos, but the name of their authoress remained undivulged. In 1810, however, Boissonade discovered Marianna’s name written in a copy of the first edition by a contemporary hand, and the veracity of this ascription has been placed beyond doubt by the recent investigations of Luciano Cordeiro, who found a tradition in Beja connecting the French captain and the Portuguese nun. The letters created a sensation on their first appearance, running through five editions in a year, and, to exploit their popularity, second parts, replies and new replies were issued from the press in quick succession. Notwithstanding that the Portuguese original of the five letters is lost, their genuineness is as patent as the spuriousness of their followers, and though Rousseau was ready to wager they were written by a man, the principal critics of Portugal and France have decided against him. It is now generally recognized that the letters are a verbatim translation from the Portuguese.

ALCOHOL, in commerce, the name generally given to “spirits of wine”; in systematic organic chemistry it has a wider meaning, being the generic name of a class of compounds (hydroxy hydrocarbons) of which ordinary alcohol (specifically ethyl alcohol) is a typical member (see ).

The word “alcohol” is of Arabic origin, being derived from the particle al and the word kohl, an impalpable powder used in the East for painting the eyebrows. For many centuries the word was used to designate any fine powder; its present-day application to the product of the distillation of wine is of comparatively recent date. Thus Paracelsus and Libavius both used the term to denote a fine powder, the latter speaking of an alcohol derived from antimony. At the same time Paracelsus uses the word for a volatile liquid; alcool or alcool vini occurs often in his writings, and once he adds “id est vino ardente.” Other names have been in use among the earlier chemists for this same liquid. Eau de vie (“elixir of life”) was in use during the 13th and 14th centuries; Arnoldus Villanovanus applied it to the product of distilled wine, though not as a specific name.

Ordinary alcohol, which we shall frequently refer to by its specific name, ethyl alcohol, seldom occurs in the vegetable kingdom; the unripe seeds of Heracleum giganteum and H. Sphondylium contain it mixed with ethyl butyrate. In the animal kingdom it occurs in the urine of diabetic patients and of persons addicted to alcohol. Its important source lies in its formation by the “spirituous” or “alcoholic fermentation” of saccharine juices. The mechanism of alcoholic fermentation is discussed in the article, and the manufacture of alcohol from fermented liquors in the article.

The qualitative composition of ethyl alcohol was ascertained by A. L. Lavoisier, and the quantitative by N. T. de Saussure in 1808. Sir Edward Frankland showed how it could be derived from, and converted into, ethane; and thus determined it to be ethane in which one hydrogen atom was replaced by a hydroxyl group. Its constitutional formula is therefore CH3CH2OH. It may be synthetically prepared by any of the general methods described in the article.

Pure ethyl alcohol is a colourless, mobile liquid of an agreeable odour. It boils at 78·3° C. (760 mm.); at −90° C. it is a thick liquid, and at −130° it solidifies to a white mass. Its high coefficient of thermal expansion, coupled with its low freezing point, renders it a valuable thermometric fluid, especially when the temperatures to be measured are below −39° C., for which the mercury thermometer cannot be used. It readily inflames, burning with a blue smokeless flame, and producing water and carbon dioxide, with the evolution of great heat; hence it receives considerable application as a fuel. It mixes with water in all proportions, the mixing being attended by a contraction in volume and a rise in temperature; the maximum contraction corresponds to a mixture of 3 molecules of alcohol and 1 of water. Commercial alcohol or “spirits of wine” contains about 90% of pure ethyl alcohol, the remainder being water. This water cannot be entirely removed by fractional distillation, and to prepare anhydrous or “absolute” alcohol the commercial product must be allowed to stand over some dehydrating agent, such as caustic lime, baryta, anhydrous copper sulphate, &c., and then distilled. Calcium chloride must not be used, since it forms a crystalline compound with alcohol. The quantity of alcohol present in an aqueous solution is determined by a comparison of its specific gravity with standard tables, or directly by the use of an alcoholometer, which is a hydrometer graduated so as to read per cents by weight (degrees according to Richter) or volume per cents (degrees according to Tralles). Other methods consist in determining the vapour tension by means of the vaporimeter of Geissler, or the boiling point by the ebullioscope. In the United Kingdom “proof spirit” is defined as having a specific gravity at 51° of 12/13 (·92308) compared with water at the same temperature. The “quantity at proof” is given by the formula:—