At the present day, however, we even more commonly use another name for this peculiar liquid—­namely, “alcohol,” and its origin is not less singular.  The Dutch physician, Van Helmont, lived in the latter part of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century—­in the transition period between alchemy and chemistry—­and was rather more alchemist than chemist.  Appended to his “Opera Omnia,” published in 1707, there is a very needful “Clavis ad obscuriorum sensum referendum,” in which the following passage occurs.—­

“ALCOHOL.—­Chymicis est liquor aut pulvis summe subtilisatus, vocabulo Orientalibus quoque, cum primis Habessinis, familiari, quibus cohol speciatim pulverem impalpabilem ex antimonio pro oculis tingendis denotat ...  Hodie autem, ob analogiam, quivis pulvis tenerior ut pulvis oculorum cancri summe subtilisatus alcohol audit, haud aliter ac spiritus rectificatissimi alcolisati dicuntur.”

Similarly, Robert Boyle speaks of a fine powder as “alcohol”; and, so late as the middle of the last century, the English lexicographer, Nathan Bailey, defines “alcohol” as “the pure substance of anything separated from the more gross, a very fine and impalpable powder, or a very pure, well-rectified spirit.”  But, by the time of the publication of Lavoisier’s “Traite Elementaire de Chimie,” in 1789, the term “alcohol,” “alkohol,” or “alkool” (for it is spelt in all three ways), which Van Helmont had applied primarily to a fine powder, and only secondarily to spirits of wine, had lost its primary meaning altogether; and, from the end of the last century until now, it has, I believe, been used exclusively as the denotation of spirits of wine, and bodies chemically allied to that substance.

The process which gives rise to alcohol in a saccharine fluid is known tones as “fermentation”; a term based upon the apparent boiling up or “effervescence” of the fermenting liquid, and of Latin origin.

Our Teutonic cousins call the same process “gaehren,” “gaesen,” “goeschen,” and “gischen”; but, oddly enough, we do not seem to have retained their verb or their substantive denoting the action itself, though we do use names identical with, or plainly derived from, theirs for the scum and lees.  These are called, in Low German, “gaescht” and “gischt”; in Anglo-Saxon, “gest,” “gist,” and “yst,” whence our “yeast.”  Again, in Low German and in Anglo-Saxon there is another name for yeast, having the form “barm,” or “beorm”; and, in the Midland Counties, “barm” is the name by which yeast is still best known.  In High German, there is a third name for yeast, “hefe,” which is not represented in English, so far as I know.

All these words are said by philologers to be derived from roots expressive of the intestine motion of a fermenting substance.  Thus “hefe” is derived from “heben,” to raise; “barm” from “beren” or “baeren,” to bear up; “yeast,” “yst,” and “gist,” have all to do with seething and foam, with “yeasty” waves, and “gusty” breezes.