Alcohol in commerce and industry / by Charles Simmonds.

  • Simmonds, Charles, 1861-1922
Date:
[1922]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Alcohol in commerce and industry / by Charles Simmonds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    epidemics foreseen. These researches, in fact, “laid the foundation for the subsequent wonderful developments which have taken place in the spheres of preven- tive medicine and hygiene ” ; and they had their origin in the patient and laborious investigations undertaken by many workers with a view to elucidating the natural processes involved in the production of alcohol. As Dr. Horace Brown has well remarked, “ modern surgery, like preventive medicine, is a child of the fermentation industries.” Admitting, then, the importance of our subject— alcohol—-let us proceed to obtain a fairly definite idea of what this important substance is like. Most people know that it is the intoxicating principle contained in beer, wine, whisky, and other spirituous liquids ; but many persons have only a very hazy, indefinite notion as to what it is in appearance, or what its properties, other than those of an intoxicant, are. Assuming, therefore, that the reader has little or no preliminary knowledge of the subject, we will devote a few pages to describing some simple experiments which will enable him to form a clear mental picture of this interesting commodity, and, incidentally, will explain certain technical terms such as “ distillation/’ “ specific gravity,” and so on. Suppose we take a quantity of ordinary beer or wine, and distil it. To do this, we boil it in a flask or other vessel, from which the vapours given off by the boiling liquid can be led away through a tube and cooled, thus condensing them into a liquid again. Alcohol, like water, is converted into vapour when boiled, so that the vapours given off by the boiling beer or wine contain a mixture of water-vapour (steam) and alcohol-vapour. Hence the condensed liquid, or “ distillate,” as it is termed, will contain the alcohol originally present in
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