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