When this action has continued, with more or less violence, for a certain time, it gradually moderates.  The evolution of bubbles slackens, and finally comes to an end; scum and lees alike settle at the bottom, and the fluid is once more clear and transparent.  But it has acquired properties of which no trace existed in the original liquid.  Instead of being a mere sweet fluid, mainly composed of sugar and water, the sugar has more or less completely disappeared, and it has acquired that peculiar smell and taste which we call “spirituous.”  Instead of being devoid of any obvious effect upon the animal economy, it has become possessed of a very wonderful influence on the nervous system; so that in small doses it exhilarates, while in larger it stupefies, and may even destroy life.

Moreover, if the original fluid is put into a still, and heated for a while, the first and last product of its distillation is simple water; while, when the altered fluid is subjected to the same process, the matter which is first condensed in the receiver is found to be a clear, volatile substance, which is lighter than water, has a pungent taste and smell, possesses the intoxicating powers of the fluid in an eminent degree, and takes fire the moment it is brought in contact with a flame.  The alchemists called this volatile liquid, which they obtained from wine, “spirits of wine,” just as they called hydrochloric acid “spirits of salt,” and as we, to this day, call refined turpentine “spirits of turpentine.”  As the “spiritus,” or breath, of a man was thought to be the most refined and subtle part of him, the intelligent essence of man was also conceived as a sort of breath, or spirit; and, by analogy, the most refined essence of anything was called its “spirit.”  And thus it has come about that we use the same word for the soul of man and for a glass of gin.

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 referandum,” 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 tin-gendis denotat ...  Hodie autem, ob analogiam, quivis pulvis teuerior, ut pulvis oculorum cancri summe subtilisatus alcohol audit, hand 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