THE INGREDIENTS OF ALCOHOL.

9

destroyed and alcohol produced." Sugar is the only constituent element from which alcohol can be produced. M. M. Duplain says: "Among the proximate principles of organic substances, sugar alone gives occasion to vinous fermentation from which alcohol is derived," and the great chemist, A. F. Fourcroy, in "Philosophy of Chemistry," declares that "the fermentation of alcohol takes place at the expense of the destruction of a vegetable principle.”

Dr. Hargreaves adds, p. 33 of his work already cited, "The juices of all vegetables, and other liquids containing sugar, are capable of alcoholic or vinous fermentation when sufficient albuminous matter is present to produce and sustain the process, which is usually the case when the juice of apples, pears, peaches, currants, grapes, etc., are employed as sources of alcohol;" and of the "several kinds of sugar, grape sugar alone is capable of being converted into alcohol; the others must be converted into grape sugar before they are capable of the transformation." It appears to be an humble imitation of the practice of the quack, who so treated all his patients as to produce "fits" because that was the only disease he knew how to cure.

"The cereals contain little sugar, but much starch which is convertible into sugar. This is accomplished by diastase, a peculiar ferment, which is mingled in very small proportions with the malt. Malt is barley or other grain in which the process of germination has been artificially produced and then arrested."

If bruised malt is mingled with ground meal or any other grain and water at the requisite temperature, the diastase of the malt converts the additional starch into sugar. This sweet liquid contains the newly formed grape sugar, and can be changed into alcohol by fermentation.

Fermented liquors can be obtained from the juices of many fruits and vegetable substances. Wine is the fermented juice of the grape, cider of the apple; various wines are made from the juices of different fruits and named accordingly, as from the currant, the elderberry and the like. Ale and beer made from the infusion of malt, chiefly of barley, but sometimes from other grains, are the principal fermented drinks now in

use. All are alcoholic beverages, and the alcohol can be separated from them, in part at least, by distillation, a process soon to be described.

The alcohol in fermented liquors is never more than seventeen per cent., the remainder being mostly water; and but for the discovery of a means of obtaining it in more concentrated form there would be no intoxicating liquor containing a larger proportion of alcohol.

The process of distillation however, has enabled the maker to load any of the fermented liquors with a greater proportion of the intoxicating element, so that now many of them are nearly as powerful as the distilled liquors themselves.

Until the twelfth century of the Christian era only fermented drinks in which by the laws of nature, according to Dr. Richardson, no larger proportion than seventeen per cent. could be alcohol, were in use among the nations of Europe, or any other portion of the earth, unless to a limited extent in China.

True, that history abounds with cases of gross individual and national indulgence, as in that of Alexander, and of the Babylonians in the times of Belshazzar, but all this was done with an article of comparatively trifling potency.

In the twelfth century the learning of the world had fled to the protection of the Arabians, and a physician named Albucassis is credited with the discovery of the process of separating more or less successfully alcohol from the innocuous fluids with which it had until then been associated. Various authorities however are to the effect that distillation was known before the dawn of authentic history. But the matter is not important to us.

The specific gravity of alcohol is 792 as compared with water 1000-about four-fifths the weight of water. Alcohol is highly inflammable, and its atoms vaporize at forty degrees lower temperature than water-which boils or is converted into steam at 212 degrees F. When a quantity of fermented liquor is confined in a vessel and subjected to a temperature of 172 degrees the particles of alcohol expand, are converted into gas, and rise from the mass with which they have been united.

Taking advantage of these facts the distiller confines the

NAME AND STRENGTH OF ALCOHOLIC PREPARATIONS.

11

fermented liquor in a closed vessel before the application of heat, and connects the space in the top of the vessel with another empty chamber by means of a "worm" or hollow tube. When the mass is heated to the proper temperature the alcohol leaves the water in the form of vapor and seeks the other vessel through the tube, which, being surrounded by cold, the vapor is condensed and finds its way into the other vessel in the form of a liquid, from which a large proportion of the water has disappeared. After a second distillation the result is called spirits of wine, and after the third, rectified spirits of wine. Owing, however, to the strong chemical affinity of alcohol for water, there will yet remain from ten to twenty per cent. of water, with some other impurities, one of which is fusel oil. Fusel oil is most abundant in spirits from Indian corn and potatoes.

To remove the remainder of the water, and obtain anhydrous, absolute alcohol, requires a substance having stronger affinity for water. Lime is generally used for this purpose, but it is for various reasons difficult to procure absolute alcohol, and the commercial article varies greatly in actual strength.

Brandy, whisky, rum and gin are usually classed by themselves as distilled or ardent spirits, and all other spirituous liquors as fermented. Ardent or distilled liquors contain, or should contain, as the result of distillation, from forty per cent. upwards of alcohol, while fermented, according to Dr. B. W. Richardson, can contain no more than seventeen per cent. by the natural process, and from that proportion downward even to less than two per cent., as in small beer.

But owing to the manipulations of the maker and vendor, with colors, drugs, gums and various ingredients and methods of adulteration, the dilution of the stronger with water and the fortification of the weaker with spirits, the line of distinction between distilled and fermented liquors seems to be well nigh lost, to all save the eye of faith or of the analytical chemist.

The following tables give the proportions of alcohol in various liquors as stated by Brande, Bence Jones and by Prof. John C. Draper, of the Medical College, New York.*

*See Hargreaves, p. 37.

BEVERAGES.

ALCOHOLIC PERCENTAGE.

Number of ounces in

By Brande By Bence Jones By Prof. Draper imperial pt. of 20 ozs.

The following table shows the percentage of alcohol in

most European alcoholic beverages.

BEVERAGES.

German Beer,

*

Rum,.

The alcohol contained in these liquors is not chemically combined with the rest of the mass, but maintains its individuality for action according to its true nature whenever brought in contact with the new surroundings whether in the human organism or elsewhere.

In this chapter I have endeavored to set forth the origin and actual composition of the article known as alcohol in the concerns of common life.

It is a product of putrefaction; never of any life-generating or life-supporting process.

*See Samuelson's "History of Drinks," page 160. Also cited in Dr. Dorchester's "Liquor Problem," page 101.

ALCOHOL NO PART OF NATURE.

13

Neither plants nor animals in any of the mysterious processes of appropriation or assimilation from the soil or the air extract or use it. It has no part in the economy of life save only as it is forced there by the art or the unnatural appetite of man. Nature never uses it in any of her wonderful, Godinvented methods of production, growth, or healing. All the presumptions are against it except such as may arise from the medicinal use which morbid and diseased conditions of the human system, and its place among the agencies of art, may justify, and in some cases make necessary.

In the next chapter we will inquire into the action of alcohol upon the structure of the body, and afterward upon the intellectual and moral nature of man.