Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/102

92 and materia medica as yet printed, or in the manuscript Arabic works of Geber and other alchemic authors which I possess and am preparing for publication, with any precise text relative to alcohol or to any definite distilled liquid. I have already explained the passages of Rases that have been wrongly cited as bearing on this point, which relate only to fermented liquids without reference to their distillation or to the extraction of alcohol. So Abulcasim, who has been cited, after describing some distilling apparatus modeled after the dibicos and tribicos of the Greeks, adds simply, "According to this method, whoever wants distilled wine can distill it." He gives directions for distilling rosewater and vinegar in the same way. He speaks only of distillation in a mass. Still, the idea of the preparation of a distilled fragrant water, like rose-water, appears here clearly for the first time; but there is nothing in it that applies to an essence proper, or especially to alcohol.

I repeat that simply a distillation of wine, without any distinction between the successive products of a fractional distillation, is meant in these texts. But it was perceived from that time, contrary to the opinion of Aristotle, that distilled wine was not identical with water; still, our authors do not speak of alcohol, although the knowledge of that substance would result almost immediately from the study of the distilled liquids yielded by wine.

The most ancient manuscript containing a precise reference to this product is in the Clef de la peinture, which was written in the twelfth century. It is a receipt in cipher, which when deciphered and translated reads: "By mixing pure and very strong wine with three parts of salt and heating it in vessels designed for the purpose, we obtain an inflammable water, which is consumed without burning the matter on which it is placed." This meant alcohol. The property of burning on the surface of bodies without burning them greatly struck the first observers of it. A more explicit mention is contained in the Treatise on Fires of Marcus Græcus, a Latin work drawn from Arabian and Grecian sources, no manuscripts of which, however, are of earlier date than the year 1500. It is a compilation of technical receipts, mostly relating to the art of war. The receipt for the burning water was added later to the original text; for it is not a part of another manuscript that exists in Munich, but is inserted in it outside of and after the Treatise on Fires. It contains some new hints and characteristics, and is as follows: "Preparation of Inflammable Water.—Take wine, black, thick, and old. For a quarter of a pound add two scruples of very finely powdered sulphur, one or two of tartar, extract of a good white wine, and two scruples of common salt in coarse fragments. Place the whole in a