previous next

A-lem′bic.

The head or cap which is placed upon the cucurbit, and which discharges by its beak into the receiver. The cucurbit contains the liquid to be distilled, and the alembie is lated thereto to prevent the escape of vapor which is raised by the heat of the fire, and is conducted to the receiver to be condensed. Some alembics have an aperture in the head to admit material to the retort when the stopper is temporarily removed.

We are indebted to the Arabs for this apparatus and its name. Zozimus, who flourished about A. D. 400, described the operation of purifying water by distillation.

Djafar, the great Arabian chemist, about A. D. 875 discovered nitric acid, which he obtained by the distillation in a retort of Cyprus vitriol, alum, and saltpeter. He obtained aqua-regia by the addition of sal-ammoniac, and no doubt felt that in obtaining a solvent of gold he had discovered the long-desired aurum potabile.

Rhazes, the Arabian, born 860, obtained absolute alcohol by distilling spirits of wine with quicklime.

Achild Bechil, of the same people, distilled together an extract of urine, clay, lime, and powdered charcoal, and obtained phosphorus.

A blind-alembic is one having a capital with no rostrum.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Rhazes (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
875 AD (1)
400 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: