Part 8

I do not think it will be seriously disputed that the Arabs had access to the Hindoo works of and before their time, and we will find, if we carefully examine the subject, that the science of medicine as distinguished from surgery, and of chemistry as a part of that science of medicine, was much more ancient than we have been prepared to admit.

It would be incredible to believe that amongst a people so observant and highly cultured as the Brahmins must have been, that medicine and the changes occurring in mixtures of various substances should have been unstudied, and there is no doubt that this subject was far from being neglected by them.

Many natural productions of the country, such as nitrate of potash, borax, carbonate and sulphate of soda, sulphate of iron, alum, common salt, and sulphur, could scarcely escape the notice of even ordinary men; but Dr. Ainslie has shown, from the evidence of old Indian medical works, that they were not only acquainted with ammonia (which they made by distilling salammoniac one part, and chalk two parts), but that they prepared sulphuric acid by burning sulphur and nitre together in earthen pots, calling it Gunduk Ka Attar, or "attar of sulphur." Nitric acid, which was prepared, not by the process described by Geber, but by mixing saltpetre, alum, and a portion of a liquor obtained by spreading cloths over the common gram plant, and leaving them exposed to the dew, when they were found to absorb the acid salt so abundantly secreted by the plant on the surface of its leaves, and which, when examined by Vauquelin, was found to contain both oxalic and acetic acids.

Muriatic acid was also made by distilling alum and common salt, dried and pounded with the above acid liquor.

Arsenic was used by them for the cure of palsy, and also for venereal diseases, and is still used by them for this purpose, and in intermittent fevers.

It would occupy too much time to go further into this subject at the present time, but there are many chemical compounds which are still made and sold in the Indian bazaars which have been used from time immemorial, and which require a knowledge of chemical manipulation in the arts of subliming, distilling, &c.

Mr. Rodwell says, "that the distillation of cinnabar with iron, described by Dioscorides, is the first crude example of distillation, which afterwards became a principal operation among the alchemists and chemists for separating the volatile from the fixed."

That this is an assumption which has no foundation in fact is evident, when we find in the Institutes of Menu many enactments against the drinking of distilled spirits, and these made of various kinds and distilled from molasses (or sugar-cane juice), rice, and the madhuca flowers.

"A soldier or merchant drinking arak, mead, or rum are to be considered offenders in the highest degree," and "for drinking spirits are to be branded on the forehead with a vintner's flag," rather a summary way of treating a drunkard, and one which would indicate that the ill effects of over-indulgence in spirituous liquors had been long known, when such severe enactments were made against it.

The method of distilling described by Mr. Kerr in the Asiatic Researches, vol. 1, is so simple that it is almost certain that it was employed in very ancient times for the purpose of distilling spirits, and also attars of various sorts, which, from time immemorial, would seem to have been a special production of India.

"The body of the still is a common large unglazed earthen water jar, nearly globular, of about 25 inches diameter at the widest part of it, and 22 inches deep to the neck, which neck rises 2 inches more, and is 11 inches wide in the opening; this was filled about a half with fermented mâhwah flowers, which swam about in the liquor to be distilled.

"This jar they placed in a furnace, not the most artificial, though not seemingly ill adapted to give a great heat with but very little fuel. This they made by digging a round hole in the ground, about 20 inches wide and full 3 feet deep, cutting an opening in the front sloping down to the bottom, perpendicular at the sides, about 9 inches wide and about 15 inches long, reckoning from the edge of the circle: this is to serve to throw in the wood and to allow a passage for the air; at the other side a small opening about 4 inches by 3 inches is made to serve as an outlet for the smoke, the bottom of the hole thus made was rounded like a cup.

"The jar was placed in this as far as it would go, and banked up with clay all round to about a fifth of its height, except at the two openings, when all was completed so far as the furnace was concerned.

"Fully one third of the still or jar was exposed to the heat when the fire was lighted; the fuel was at least 2 feet from the bottom of the jar.

"On to this jar there was now fitted what is called an adkur, this being made of two earthen pans with their bottoms turned towards each other, and a hole of about 4 inches diameter in the middle of each of them, the lower of these pans fitted the hole in the jar, and was luted with clay, the upper was luted to the lower one, and had a diameter of about 14 inches, the juncture formed a neck of about 3 inches, the upper pan was about 4 inches deep, with a rim round the central hole, this formed a gutter, and by means of a hollow bamboo luted to this, the spirit, as it condensed, ran off into the receiver.

"The arrangement was now completed by luting on a small copper pot or vessel about 5 inches deep, 8 inches wide at mouth, and about 10 inches at bottom, with its mouth downwards.

"The cooler was formed by placing on a support at the back of the furnace an earthen vessel containing a few gallons of water, from which, by means of a bamboo tube, the water was allowed to run on to the centre of the copper pot, from where it collected in the clay saucer, and ran off by a small hole and bamboo tube for use again.

"In about three hours' time from lighting the fire, they draw off fully fifteen bottles of spirits."

Comparing this simple form of apparatus with those described by Geber, we must admit that there is no doubt of the earlier date of this simple apparatus; and, as we have seen, distilled spirit is expressly mentioned in the Institutes of Menu, we are bound to admit that distillation was in use long ere the Arabian times and that of Dioscorides.

Many such examples might be examined, but I will take one for illustration--that of the manufacture of common salt.

Let us take this manufacture as a typical one.

We find in Jackson's Antiquities and Chronology of the Chinese that, 2500 B.C., Shin-nong invented the method of obtaining salt from sea-water. He also gets credit for having composed books on medicine.

In George Agricola's De Re Metallica (1561) there is a curious set of woodcuts representing the manufacture of salt, and in the first, in which the whole process of evaporating sea-water by the sun's rays is shown most completely from the raising of the sluices to allow the water to flow into the various evaporating ponds, to the packing of the finished salt in barrels--it is a curious fact that the trees which are introduced are palms, and the figure in the distance is dressed in Oriental costume, while even the ship seems to partake of this character.

A more advanced state of things is shown in the third drawing of the 12th book, where a pan is shown, made of iron plates riveted together so as to form a flat sheet, which forms the bottom of the pan, of which the sides are composed of thick wood, strengthened with plates of iron at the corners.

The bottom of the pan has a series of iron eyes or loops, and these, when it is fixed over its furnace, are attached to iron rods, which are hung from a network of wooden bars, so that the whole bottom of the pan is supported securely at a considerable number of points.

The furnace is very simple, being simply a wall surrounding an oblong space, a little smaller than the pan, so that the sides of the latter may rest on the walls all round, except for a small space in front where the fuel is introduced, which apparently burns on the ground alone.

The method of manufacturing salt in Japan is almost identical with that figured in Agricola. There is the same arrangement of salt garden or series of ponds and ditches, and the dirty salts mixed with sand are again lixiviated, and the filtered liquid is boiled down in curiously formed pans or boilers.

Of these there are two chief forms, the first being a tank or pan formed of large pieces of slate, with the joints made with clay, and surrounded with a mud wall. The whole is covered with an arch or vault and is filled with the brine, which is then evaporated by surface heat, the fire being placed at one end and the flue at the other.