1892 Drinks of the world

DRir^KS.

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% plan would be to start a distillery ; so he hurried off at once to Nordhausen, where his manufacture of Brandy (his own invention) became so famous that people from all parts came to him to learn the new art, and to become distillers. From that time his Satanic Majesty has never had to complain of paucity of subjects. It seems fairly established that the famous chemist Geber, who lived in the 7th or 8th century, was acquainted with distillation, and we know that it was practised by the Arabian and Saracenic alchemists, but have no knowledge whether they made any prac- tical use of the alcohol they produced. They, at all events, gave us the word by which we now know the spirit, or ethereal part, of wine. Alcohol, distilled from wine, is first reliably men- tioned by a celebrated French alchemist and physician, Arnaud de Villeneuve, who died in 131 3, who gave it the name of aqua vitce, or water of life,^ and regarded it as a valuable adjunct in physic, and as a boon to humanity. Raymond LuUy, the famous alchemist, who is said to have been his pupil, declared it to be " an emanation from the Deity," and on its introduc- tion it was supposed to be the elixir of life, capable of rejuvenating those who partook of it, and, as such, was only purchasable at an extremely high price. We may see, by a book ^ written 200 years after the death of Arnaud de Villeneuve, the esteem in which Aqua Vitse was held even after so great a lapse of time.

1 The French name, Eau de Vie, having the same meaning.