- Passing from the word to the thing signified, it is safe to say that spirituous drinks have been known from time im-memorial. Fermented liquors, including wine, beer, and mead, were familiar to the ancients. Distillation appears to have been known to the Chinese from a period in the remote past, and they may perhaps have distilled wine, thus obtaining alcohol from it; but the usually accepted belief is that the Arabian chemists were the discoverers of alcohol from wine. E. 0. von Lipp-mann1 has recently contended that the discovery of alcohol probably took place in Italy, the article being first mentioned in an Italian work c average values may be taken as approximately the following: -

We now proceed to describe more fully the materials and udies cesses employed, and the principles underlying the various opd he tions.