Alembics

By the thirteenth century AD, essential oils were being produced along with medicinal and herbal preparations in pharmacies. Around this time improvements in distillation techniques were made, in particular the development of the alembic apparatus, which would eventually estabUsh the quaUty of such matenals. As a result, many of the essential oils in use today are denved from those produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centunes in terms of odor character, even though production methods have continued to evolve. The current practice of aroma therapy is an indication of this common root of medicinal and fragrance chemistry. 

Y. Aiaten, A. Baniel, and R. Blumbeig, Potassium Nitrate, Pioceedings No. 99, The Eeitihsei Society, Alembic House, London, Oct. 1967. 

Egyptians purportedly practiced distillation around 1000—2000 BC by heating wine and making a product called arden spidts. China and India are also said to have carried out distillation in the pre-Christian era. The Chinese reportedly made a distilled beverage from nee beer around 800 BC. The Arabs learned about distillation from the Egyptians and developed an apparatus in the form of a closed heated container that was called an alembic. 

Brenn-barkeit, /. combustibility, -blase, /, alembic, still, -cylinder, m. (Pharm.) moxa. -dauer, /. burning time or period (of lamps, etc.) life. 

In a manner comparable to Christian eschatology, alchemical literature insisted on its own purificatory rituals that involved the preliminary torture, death and dismemberment of the prima materia. The canonical Catholic depiction of Christ s sacrificed body was a primary source for sixteenth and seventeenth century illustrations of the tortured body in anatomical and alchemical publications. In eflfect, the practice of Paracelsian alchemical medicine and surgery had a sacramental connotation, since the physician acted on the human body in the same manner as God worked on the great universal Macrocosmic Body. In like manner, the Paracelsian physician introduced the universal panacea, a liquid form of the philosopher s stone, into the alchemical alembic that was the Microcosmic human body. This alchemical medicine was permeated with the starry virtues of the heavens and the grace of Christ s Spirit, redeeming the body and soul of the patient by granting him not only an extended life on earth, but even eternal salvation. 

Kieley, Robert S. "The architect in the alembic Chemistry, neoplatonism, and religion in 17th century English generation theory." PhD thesis, Northwestern Univ., 1996. 

Mahdihassan, S. Alembic and ambix as Sino-Arabic terms, with an explanation of "Mary s Bath". Studs Hist Med 4 (Mar 1980) 39-43. 

Soukup, R.W., S. von Osten and H. Mayer. Alembics, cucurbits, phials, crucibles a 16th-century alchemical laboratory inventory excavated in Austria... 

Linden, Stanton J. The breaking of the alembic patterns in alchemical imagery in English Renaissance poetry. WascanaRev 8 (1974) 105-113. 

Flashes of light passed before Auriols eyes, and strange noises smote his ears. The furnace breathed forth flames and mephitic vapors the spiral worm of the alembic became red hot, and seemed filled with molten lead the skeletons grinned and gibbered the bald decapitated head opened its eyes, and fixed them with a stony glare, on the... 

Smith, Timothy D Arch. Alembic a novel. Naperville (IL) Dalkey Archive P, 1992. 226p. ISBN 1564780090... 

The solution is cooled to room temperature and is washed with a few milliliters of benzene into a single-necked flask. The solvent is removed with a rotary evaporator connected to a water aspirator vacuum gentle heat is supplied from a steam bath. The residue is cooled to room temperature before air is admitted. About 200 ml. of hexane is added and stirred with the residue to extract most of the carborane. The brownish tar which remains undissolved is allowed to settle and the solution is decanted. A second extraction of the tar with 40 ml. of hexane converts the residue to a solid which is removed by filtration. The solid is washed on the filter with an additional 40 ml. of hexane. The combined hexane extracts are filtered and then washed in a separatory funnel with four 100-ml. portions of a chilled aqueous 10% sodium hydroxide solution, followed by four 100-ml. portions of water. After the yellow hexane solution has been dried over anhydrous magnesium sulfate and filtered, the solvent is removed by use of a rotary evaporator connected to a water aspirator. The carborane is washed with a small amount of pentane into a 300-ml. single-necked flask which is attached to an alembic column as pictured in Fig. 13. 

Glass wool is placed in the solution, in the neck of the alembic distillation column, and at the top of the column to inhibit bumping during the distillation. 

A Guide to Hazard and Operability Studies, Chemical Industries Association, Alembic House, London, England (1977). 

Some sources give the date as 1804. Gay-Lussac read these now famous results before the Philomathic Society in 1808, which were published in 1809, in Gay Lussac, J.L., Memoir on the Combination of Gaseous Substances with Each Other. Memories de la Societe d Arcueil 2, 207-34. An English translation of this document, published by Henry A. Boorse and Lloyd Motz, eds., The World of the Atom, Vol. 1. New York Basic Books, 1966 (translation Alembic Club Reprint No. 4), can be found at http //webserver.lemoyne.edu/faculty/giunta/ gaylussac.html. 

Avogadro, A. 1811. Essay on a Manner of Determining the Relative Masses of the Elementary Molecules of Bodies, and the Proportions in Which They Enter into These Compounds. J. Physi. 73, 58-76. [Alembic Club Reprint No. 4] Translated paper available online at http // webserver.lemoyne.edu/faculty/giunta/avogadro.htinl. 

The most perfect alembic in which the Quintessence can be elaborated is conformable to this figure, and the Quintessence itself is represented by the Sign of the Pentagram. 

The most famous work of "chemical philosophy" in the second half of the nineteenth century is Stanislao Cannizzaro, "Sketch of a Course of Chemical Philosophy" (1858 Edinburgh Alembic Club reprint 18, 1947), in which he argues the identity of the chemical and physical atom. 

A. W. Williamson, "Results of a Research on Etherification" and "Suggestions for a Dynamics of Chemistry Derived from the Theory of Etherification," reprinted in Papers on Etherification and on the Constitution of Salts (Edinburgh Alembic Club Reprints, 1929), no. 16, 517, 1824. See J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, 580, 672. 

See Kragh, "Between Physics and Chemistry," 27 and Barkan, "Walther Nemst," 158159, drawing on a letter from Ostwald to Nerst, 22 November 1892, Ostwald Papers, AAW, Berlin. The views at issue are found in J. H. van t Hoff, "Role of Osmotic Pressure in the Analogy between Solutions and Gases" (1887) and Svante Arrhenius, "On the Dissociation of Substances in Aqueous Solution" (1887), in The Foundations of the Theory of Dilute Solution (Edinburgh Alembic Club, 1929), no. 19. 

Arrhenius, Svante. "On the Dissociation of Substances in Aqueous Solution (1887)." In The Foundations of the Theory of Dilute Solution. Edinburgh Alembic Club, 1929. 

Cannizzaro, Stanislao. Sketch of a Course of Chemical Philosophy. Alembic Club Reprints. Edinburgh 1947. 

That night I cleaned half the wall of books and the alchemy bench. I do not lift out the books— that takes me a couple of days when the Maestro decides it needs doing—so the bookshelves are little problem. But all the mortars, pestles, beakers, funnels, alembics, and other vessels have to be polished, all the reagent bottles wiped and their shelves also, so by the time I had come around to the door, it was too late to go any further. 

Fig. X. p. 85, represents methods of distilling with an apparatus for cooling the volatile products the lower vessel is an alembic, with a long neck, the upper part of which passes through a vessel containing cold water.

You break vials, and consume coals, only to soften your brains still more with the vapours. You also digest alum, salt, orpiment, and altrament you melt metals, build small and large furnaces, and use many vessels nevertheless I am sick of your folly, and you suffocate me with your sulphurous smoke. You would do better to mind your own business, than to dissolve and distil so many absurd substances, and then to pass them through alembics, cucurbits, stills, and pelicans."... 

Vitriol fire aqua fortis aqua regis Amalgam Alembic. 

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