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And Digestion

Alcohol.

PURE alcohol is the basis of all manufactured liquors. It is a limpid, colorless liquid, of a hot pungent taste, and having a slight but agreeable smell. It is the characteristic ingredient of fermented drinks, and gives them their intoxicating quality. Dilute alcohol may be procured by the ordinary process of distillation, from all fermented liquors : when drawn from wine (as in France) it is called brandy, when from rice (as in the East Indies) it is called arrack or toddy, when from grain or malt (as in the United States or Great Britain) it is called whiskey, and when from molasses or the juice of the sugarcane (as in the West Indies) it is called rum. Thus we see, that all spirituous liquors are identical, when the extraneous bodies from which such liquors are obtained have been removed, with this exception, that a variable amount of water is present in them; they are more or less concentrated solutions of alcohol, whose properties have been fully given: thus, the alcohol from rum, wine, malt, pota- (15)