The Coming of Ardent Water

Abstract

OF all the evocative names in the history of alchemy and chemistry none can be considered more striking than aqua ardens-the water that burns-for burning is an attribute of fire, not No one can fully appreciate the strangeness of what this meant to mediaeval people unless he is aware that the work of the alchemist, almost from Hellenistic times onwards, and certainly also in China, had concerned the conjunctio oppositorum, the hierogamic union of sun and moon, the Tao of the synthesis of Yin and Yang, indeed the Hmarriage of fire and water. True, the light fractions of petroleum had been distilled into CtGreekFire by Callinicus at Byzantium about +670, but the petrolor gasoline-like liquids which he and his successors produced never got the name of Hwaters, either in West or East, presumably because although whitish and fairly transparent they smelt so differently and were immiscible with They were in fact thought of more as oils, quite rightly; and actually received in China that designation from the time of the earliest knowledge of them. It is therefore a matter of great interest to discover, if we can, who first became familiar with the taste and smell of strong distilled alcohol, and where this was.§