Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 157, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1918 — Remote Origin of Alcohol. [ARTICLE]

Remote Origin of Alcohol.

No one knows when alcohol was first made. It Is commonly taught that it was first distilled by the Arabians about the tenth century, but there is little doubt that they obtained the secret from Italian doctors, who had long been practicing it Paul Richter, in a recent number of the Berliner KHnische Wochenschrift, shows that a knowledge of “aqua ardens,” or “burning water,” may be traced as far back as the second century A. D., to a Christian father named Hippolytus, who possessed a recipe analogous to those handed about during the middle ages.