Wine hath the strength of fire when to man
It entereth in; and like Boreas
Or Notus, rolling up the Libyan sea
In mighty waves till all the depths lie bare,-
So doth it ever-set the minds of men.
WHENEVER the original of any peculiarly far-reaching depravity is enshrouded in mystery, it seems to be customary among Christians to charge it to the account of the Arabs. In this way, the origin of the word "alcohol" is ascribed to them. Probably alcohol is the Chaldaic cohol (Hebrew kaal) with the Arabic intensifier al, and signifies the pure spirit.* So high an authority as Samuel Hopewood credits this theory of the origin of the word. Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire expresses the opinion that the Arabs first "invented and named the alembic for the purpose of distillation." This much, however, is well established: the