II. cap. XXVI.

t The daughters of Danaus, King of Argos, who with €be exception of one, namely Hypemmestra, destroyed their husbands in the first night of their nuptials, at the suggestion of their father ; because an oracle had foretold his death, by the hands of one of his son's-in-law, all of whom were his nephews. Hyperm-
UPHOLDING IMPOSTUBE. 295
been displayed to the initiated, and history has indicated the manner in which this was managed. Xerxes caused the monument of Bdus* to be opened. The body of this Prince lay in a glass coffin, nearly filled with oil, and bearing an inscription on the side of it, which conveyed the following warning : " Woe, woe to him, who having opened this tomb, shaQ neglect to fill the coffin 1" Xerxes gave immediate orders to fill it up with oil ; but, however great the quantity poured in^ it was impos- sible to fill it. This phenomenon was regarded as the presage of those disasters which darkened, and finally terminated the life of Xerxes.f Hidden fix)m notice by the position of the corpse, or by some less remarkable obstacle, was a tube, by which the coffin communicated with a reservoir of oil, owing to which that in the coffin was always kept at the same height ; and the mouth of the
nestra was tried for her disobedience, in favouring the escape of her husband, Lynceus, but acquitted by the unanimous voice of the people. Her sisters were purified from the murder by Mer- cury, and Minerva, at the command of Jupiter ; but condemned at death to eternal labour, in the regions of Huto, by attempt- ing to fill with water a vessel full of holes, so that the water ran out as soon as it was poured into it. — ^£d.
* Belus, who was one of the ancient Kings of Babylon, reigned about 1800 years before Semiramis, and was deified at his death. His temple is stated to have been originally the tower of Babel : Xerxes plundered and demolished it. Among other curious relics, besides the coffin, were several statues of gold, one of which was forty feet high. The cause of the permanent level of the oil in the coflin, must have been discovered when the temple was des- troyed : but, it nevertheless, in the mean time deluded the igno- rant, and passed for a miracle. — En.
t Ktesias in PersicU. — Aelian. Variar, Hist, lib. xiii. cap. iii.
296 HYDROSTATICS USED FOR
tube opening at that point, aOried off the surplus, and thus prevented the coffin fi-om becoming fiiU.
Formerly, the perspiration, or sweating of statues, which arose from the drops of water deposited upon them by the atmosphere saturated with aqueous vapour, which resolved itself into liquid on coming into contact with these cold dense bodies, was superstitiously regarded as really miraculous. Such a metamorphosis in our times, in damp weather and moist climates, is too fre- quently renewed to be turned to much account. But historians and poets unite in the assertion, that the sta- tues of heroes and images of Gods have both perspired and also have shed visible tears, the certain presages of calamities aboiit to descend on their fellow-citizens or worshippers. The determination of the Czar, Peter the Great, put an end to a pretended miracle of this kind at St. Petersburg. An image of the Blessed Virgin, painted on wood, wept abundantly, in order, so it was given out, to testify her abhorrence of the reforms projected by the Czar. Peter himself discovered and exposed to the people the mechanism by which the fraud was managed. A reservoir, filled with oil, was concealed between the two panels -of which the picture consisted, from which the oil, thinned by the heat of the multitude of tapers lighted up around the image, was conveyed by conduits, and found its way through small holes at the angles of the eyes, thus representing tears as it filtered.* All the miracles of weeping statues, &c., are referable to similar artifices ; and to the same source we may trace
* L^v^que. Histoire de Russie. (Eleventh Edition.) tome v. pages 161— -162.
UPHOLDING IMPOSTURE. 297
another of a somewhat different nature, related by Gre- gory of Tours. This historian saw, in a monastery at Poitiers, a lamp lighted before a fragment of the true cross, the oil of which miraculously overflowed, and in the space of an hour poured out a quantity equal to that contained in the reservoir. Indeed the rapidity of its rising increased in proportion to the incredulity at first displayed by the spectator.*
The learned of the sixteenth century have so often spoken of perpetual lamps, and the students of natural philosophy have so ardently sought to revive the secret, that we might suppose their credulity to be founded on, and the perseverance of their attempts to be sustained by, some tradition. For the realization of this seeming miracle, the fulfilment of two apparently impossible condi- tions was necessary. In the first place, it was necessary to provide an inexhaustible aliment for combustion ; and in the second, to furnish an inconsumable wick for the combustion of this aliment. Recollecting the miracle at the tomb of Belus, the mystery is easily detected. At some hidden point, let a tube be placed by which the lamp may communicate with a secret reservoir, so large that the consumption of one, or even of several days, will but little alter its level : thus, the first part of the problem is resolved. The second disappears before the common invention of the present period, namely, that of lamps without wicks,t an invention resulting from the same
* Greg. Turon. Miracul, lib. i. cap, v.
t These lamps serve for night-lamps ; but care is necessary to clean the tube frequently, otherwise they are liable to be extin- guished. This inconvenience was not experienced where the
298 HYDROSTATICS USED TO UPHOLD IMPOSTURE.
cause as the two last miracles we have cited, the dilatation of oil by heat. In the precaution of filling the con- cealed reservoir with regularity, there could be nothing embarrassing ; and as to any perplexity firom the neces- sity, in case of accident, of changing the tube at the orifice of which the expanded oil was inflamed, the wonder- worker was skilful enough, while giving it his own atten- tion, to distract that of the spectators firom his operations for a few moments.*
The agency of heat, in the expansion of oil, or any other liquid, belongs to another science than hydrosta- tics ; thus, we are naturally led to examine, what was the extent, or rather how much, we can trace of those pretended miracles, for which the ancients were indebted to a practical knowledge of chemistry.
Passing to more elevated ideas, we may recal the example of Aclepiodotus,t who chemically reproduced the deleterious exhalations of a sacred grotto,} which proves that a science so prolific of apparent miracles was not un- known in the temples. Other facts tend to confirm this
lamp was to bum withoat inteiniptiQn ; the tube becomes ob- structed, only because the oil, partly decomposed, attaches itself to the sides of the tube, when the night lamp is extinguished in the morning.
* There is no necessity for explaining the above described phe- nomenon by the great expansion of oil, for a wick of asbestos would, although incombustible, yet be fully adequate to raise the oil, and keep up the flame as long as the lamp was duly fed with the combustible fluid. — Ed.
t A general of Mithridatus. — ^Ed.
X Dissertation de M. Virey. Journal de Pharmacie. chap. viii. page 153.
CHEMICAL DECEPTIONS. 299
opinion. Marcos, the leader of one of those sects which, in the earlier ages of the Chtirch, endeavoured to amal- gamate with Christian doctrines particular dogmas and rites of initiation, filled three cups of transparent glass with colourless wine ; during his prayer, the fluid in one of these cups hecame blood-red^ in another purpU, and in the third, of an aaure blue.^ At a later period, a well might be seen, in an Egyptian church, the waters of which, whenever they were placed in a lamp, became of a sanguine colour.f
In addition to these seeming miracles, probably bor- rowed from the mysteries of some ancient temple, let us add one of later times. At the Court of theDuke of Bruns- wick, Professor Beyruss promised that, during dinner, his coat should become red : and, to the amazement of the Prince and his other guests, it actually became of that colour. J M. Vogel, who relates the fact, does not reveal the secret made use of by Beyruss ; but he observes that, by pouring limewater on the juice of the beet-root, a colour- less liquid is obtained ; and that a piece of cloth steeped in this liquid and quickly dried, becomes red in a few hours, simply by contact with the air ; and further, that the effect is accelerated in an apat'tment where champagne and other wines are being plentifully poured out.|l It
* S. Epiphan. contra Haeres, lib. i. tome iii. contri Marcosios. Haer, 24. Sainte Croix has inadvertently ascribed this miracle to the Pepuzziens. Recherches sur ks Mysthres du Paganime, tome ii. pages 190—191.
t Macrizy, quoted by Et. Quatrem^re. M4moire8 sur VEgypte, tome I. page 449.
X Journal de Phamuicie, tome iv. (fdvrier 1818.) pages 57 — 58.
II In tl^s case the lime, which in its pure or alkaKne state.
300 CHEMICAL DECEPnOMS.
has been proved, by recent experiments, that wool dyed by orchil* of a violet colour, or stained blue by the acidulated sulphate of indigo, in a bath of hydro-sulphuric add, becomes colouriess, yet resumes the blue or the violet colour on exposure to the free air.f Either explanation applies to the modem fact, and indicates the possibility of reviving ancient prodigies : it also discovers the man- ner in which, amidst flaming torches, and smoking in- cense, in the sanctuaries of Polytheism, the veil conceal- ing the sacred things may have been seen to change from white to a deep blood-red hue, and which spectacle was considered as the presage of frightful disasters.
Blood boiling on the altars, or upon the marbles, or in the vases of the temple, was also indicative of peril and calamity. In Provence, in the sixteenth century, when a consecrated phial, filled with the blood of St. Magdalene, in a solid state, was placed near her pre<> tended head, the blood became liquid, and suddenly boiled.^ The same phenomenon was exhibited in the Cathedral of Avellino, with the blood of St. Lawrence,!
unites with tlie acid of the juice of the beet-root, and decolourizes it, attracts carbonic acid from the air, which converts it into car- bonate of lime, so that the acid of the beet being again set free, aided by any excess of the carbonic acid, acts upon the colouring matter, and restores the colour. The quantity of carbonic acid extricated by the breathing of many persons in a crowded room, and evolved by the champagne, would greatly facilitate this change. —Ed.
* A dye-stuff made from a species of lichen named Rocella tinetaria, — ^Ed.
t Academic dea Sciences, stance du 2 Janvier, 1837.
i Longueruana, tome i. page 162.
II Traveh of Swinburn, vol. i. page 81. — St. Lawrence Scopali was a native of Otranta. He was forty years of age before he
CHEMICAL DECEPTIONS. 301
and also at Bisseglia, with that of St. Pantaleon,* and of two other martyrs.f In the present day, at an annual public ceremony at Naples, some of the blood of St. Ja- nuarius^ collected and dried centuries ago, becomes spon- taneously liquified, and rises in a boiling state to the top
was admitted into holy orders. He became an ardent preacher, and amongst other works, published, " The Spiritual Combat," a production of considerable merit twenty years before his death, which happened in 1610, in his 80th year. — Ed.
* St. Pantaleon was physician to the Emperor Maximianus : he fell into idolatry, but was rescued from it, and afterwards ardently desired to expiate his crime by martyrdom, a wish which was granted to him, in the barbarous persecution of the Chris- tians by Dioclesian. — ^Ed,
t TVavels of Swinlmm, vol. i. page 165.
t St. Januarius was a native of Naples ; he became Bishop of Beneventa, and was ultimately beheaded at Puzzuoli. In the fifth century, his remains were removed to Naples, and his head and two phials of his blood are still preserved in a chapel, called the treasury, in the great church of that city. The usual time at which the pretended miracle recorded in the text is performed, is the 19th of September, the feast of St. Januarius. — Butler, in his Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, &c. (vol. vii. p. 4.) endeavours to maintain the reality of this miracle, by mentioning the names of a number of ro3ral, venerable, and noble persons who had witnessed it. The blood, or rather pretended blood, in its congealed state, is of a dark red colour ; but when brought in sight of the head, though at a considerable distance, it melts, bubbles up, and on the least motion, flows on one side. Notwithstanding the great antiquity of this assumed miracle, and the argument of Butler in support of its authenticity, drawn from the improbability that so many holy, venerable, and learned persons who have vouched for its truth, can have been, and are hypocrites, impostors, and jugglers, we see no reason for altering our opinion that the blood is not real blood, and its liquifaction is most probably the effect of wanning the chemical compound mentioned in the text, not so wonderful as he supposes. — Ed.
302 CHEMICAL DECEPTIONS.
of the phial that incloses it. These phenomena may be produced by reddening sulphuric ether with orcanette {Onosma, Linn.) and mixing the tincture with sperma- ceti. This preparation, at ten degrees above the freezing point {centigrade), remains condensed, but melts and boils at twenty. To raise it to this temperature, it is only necessary to hold the phial which contains it in the hand for some time. If a little simple jugglery be combined with this philosophical experiment, the apparent miracle is complete. At Naples, the pretended relics of St. John the Baptist annually sheds blood i^ and blood trickles from the withered bones of St. Thomas Aquinas, thus proving the authenticity of the relics, held in vene- ration by the monks of Fossa Nuova ;t and the bones of St. Nicholas of Tolentius,t exposed on the altar for the adoration of the faithful, soon fills with blood a large silver basin placed below it, by the foresight of the priests.!
From this solution, it seems to follow, that the Thau- maturgists were acquainted with alcoholic liquors, and with the art of distilling necessary to obtain them ; and
* Pilati de Tassulo : Voyages en d%f4rens pays de V Europe, tome I. pages 350 — 351.
t Prfez de Pipemo. — Pilati de TaBsulo. Voyages, &c. tome i. pages 345 — 350.
X St. Nicholas was a native of St. Angelo, near Fenno, in the Marca of Amona. He was bom, a.d. 1245, of opulent parents. Whilst a young man, he entered himself as a noviciate in the order of Tolentino. After a life of austerity, he died in 1306, and was canonized by Eugenius IV. in 1446. — ^Ed.
II Le P. Labat. Voyages d'Espagne et d^Italie, tome iv. pages 100—101.
r~
CHEMICAL DECEPTIONS. 303
that thus it was easy for them to produce the spectacle of burning liquids, with which they astonished the mul- titude. This is not a rashly hazarded supposition. In an ancient sacred book of the Hindoos,* in which are col- lected doctrines of the remotest ages, under the name of Kea^soum, mention is made of the distillation of spirits. This secret, indeed, was not confined to the temples, for the art of distillation had been practised in Hindostanf from a very early age ; at Nepaul ;{ at Boutan ;|| and also at Thibet, where arrack is extracted from chong, or rice- wine,§ by a process which the natives have certainly not learned from Europeans.^
It may be asked, was it from Europe that the art of distilling was received by the Nagals,** a free people of the mountains of Assam. The same question may be asked respecting the inhabitants of the provinces situated
* Oupnek'hat, Brahmen 24 ; Journal Asiatique, tome ii. pages 270. t Recherches Astatiques, tome i. pages 335 — 345.
I Bihl. Univ, Litt&at, tome iv. page 272.
II Turner. Embassy to Thibet, etc. vol. i. page 50.
§ Kice wine is still made in China; and the lees when distilled, yield a spirit not imlike brandy> which is named show-choojMn-tchoo, and amsi/gAoo, which literally means, bomt, or hot wine. How long prior to the Christian era the Chinese exercised the art of making wine» and distilling it into spirits, it is impossible to say : — ^but Du Halde' informs us, that 2207 years before Christ, in the reign of the Emperor Yu or Ta-yu, Rice wine was invented, and its use pro- duced such evil consequences, that it was expressly forbidden to be made, or drank under the severest penalties. — Ed.
% Cadet Gassicourt. Article Distillation, in the Dictionnaire des Sciences Midicales,
** NouveUes Annates des Voyages, tome xxxii. page 234. * Du Halde's Annals of the Monarche, &c. vol. i. page 145.
'^
3(H CHnncAL deceitions.
betwem Ava, Siam, and Pc^o, where toddy is made from thejuioeof the Nqxi pahn tree; or in reference to the ifllandcn of Sumatra, who in 1603, were seen by a tra- vcffler* making use of earthem tiles in extracting a liquor stronger than our hran the juice of the sugar-cane. We may safdy reply in the negatiTC, and it is probable, that fire centuries brfore our oa, this art had passed into Asia lifinor, and into Greece. Traces of this communicatiim exists, if we admit the ingenious inferences, by whidi Sdnilzf en- deavours to establish, that the liqueur of Scythia the Scythicus latex, of Democritus, was nothing else dian alcohol, the Polish name of which, gorzalka,^ recaDs the name chrusoloucos {xfvf^xowioi) given it by the ancients. Not that we ought to r^ard the liqueur of Scythia as a preparation of spirit of wine, which only became known in Poland in the sixteenth century : but some of the kinds of spirits of which we have spoken might reach Scythia, as an article of its commerce with Thibet, or Hindostan. The Scythians indeed, may have obtained it themselves from the productions of their own territories. Siberia has been long shut out from the age of inventions. There the stems of the bireh are annually co]lected,|| not only in order to obtain the
* FrBn9oiB Martin. Descriptian du jpremUr Voyage aux Indes OriefUaks par lea Franpik (Paria 1609), p. 56—71, and 166.
t Cadet OaMicourt. Art. DiatiUatioH. Dictionnaire dee Sciences Midicalea.
X In Sclavonia, gorUka or horilka. . . In Slavonian and in Polish gore signifies a thing that bums ; the termination *lka indicates a diminutive.
II Heracleum sphondylium ; fausse brancursine ; patte d'oie, Cow parsley. Coure d' Agriculture de Rosier (1809), art. Berce,
CHEMICAL DECEPTIONS. 305
sugary efflorescence with which, in drying, they become covered, but more particularly to extract from them a large quantity of alcohol, by causing them to ferment in water.
Aristotle assures us that art had been successful in producing oil from common salt.* It can scarcely be doubted that he alludes to the production of hydro- chloric acid, which may have received the name of oil, in the same way that sulphuric acid has long been known under the name of oil of vitriol/f Finally, the art of distillation, as employed for the extraction of mercury from cinnabar, has been desoibed by Pliny and Diosco- rides, J with no indication of its being a recent discovery : now this art, having once become known, was it unlikely that the doctors of the temples should endeavour to apply it to fermented liquors ?
When we recollect that, placed in contact with flame, the wine of Falemo became ignited ;|| that the wines of the Greeks and the Romans, even when diluted with two parts of water, were intoxicating in their effects; that these wines were preserved and improved by being kept in the highest story of their houses, in cellars protected from the heat of the sun, it is natural to suppose that a portion of pure alcohol, more or less strong, was mixed with them ; and thus, that the
* Aristot. Problem xxiij« 13.
t Hydrochloric acid, which is procured from salt, is still popu- larly called spirit ofsea^salt. — Ed.
X Dioscorid. lib. v. cap. ex. Plin. Hist. Nat, lib. xxxiii. cap.
VIII.
II Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. xiy. cap. vi. — ^All wines contain either free or combined alcohol. — Ed.
VOL. I. X
306 CHEMICAL DECEPnONS.
art having issued from the temples, was ministering to the uses of domestic life. But this supposition would ill accord with all that we know of the ancient art of making wine. Faithful to the path we have marked out, let us limit ourselves to inquire if, when more abstruse secrets passed over from the temples of India to enrich those of Asia Minor, of Etruria, and of Greece, the art of obtaining spirituous liquors by distillation, uni- versal in the East, would not follow in the same route, and fall also into the hands of the priests of these coun- tries? The general argument applies here in all its force ; this art must certainly have been known in temples where apparent miracles, referable to its agency alone, were performed.*
* In the opinion of the Editor, the reasoning of our author as to the introduction of the art of distillation into Asia Minor, Etruria, and Grreeoe, from Hindostan, is by no means necessary in order to account for the knowledge of ardent spirits by the priesthood, and their employment in some of the mysteries of the temples. It is a well known fieict, that there is no variety of the human race, of however low a grade, that has not some means of inducing intoxication, by means of beverages. In the Friendly Islands, when Captain Cook first visited them, the natives made an intoxi- cating beverage, by chewing the root of the Kava plant, and mixing the juice thus extracted with water. The Tartars make Araka, a strong liquor, from the fermented milk of the cow and the horse : in Egypt Araki is the produce of the date^ and in India that of the flowers of the Madhuca tree (Bassia butyracea). The Siamese become intoxicated with lau, made from rice : the Chinese with show-choo, a species of brandy, distilled from the lees of mandarin, a rice wine : the Mexican on a spirit made from pulyne, the fermented juice of the Agave Americana; and the Kamschatkains on Slutkaia trava, a spirit made from a sweet grass.
CHEMICAL DECEPTIONS. 307
and another from the juice of the whortle berry, mixed with that of the Amanita muscaria. Now all inebriating liquors, how- ever produced, and whether obtained from vegetable or from animal substances, derive their inebriating properties from alcohol ; and, if that opinion be admitted, it is easy to conceive that as, when these liquors were heated or boiled, they must consequently have become weaker, and lost much of their in- toxicating properties, those who observed this effect would be led to suppose that something was driven off with the vapour during the boiling, and without this the liquors ceased to intoxicate. The natural result of such an observation would be an attempt to re- gain this important ingredient, by condensing the vapour ; and the possibility of doing this would be observed almost as early as the discovery of its being carried off by the vapour: hence the first step to the performance of the process of distillation. It is, therefore, probable that ^ the discovery of ardent spirits is coeval with civilization; and that the process of procuring them was known in many countries, without being communicated from other nations ; and, consequently, must have been familiar in the temples, the repositories of all the science and learning of an- tiquity. — ^Bd.
X 2
308 SECRETS USED IN PAGAN RITES.