Page 191 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

76 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to
singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth
words which were better unspoken. • Homer (800 bce–700 bce)

bring the group together in a common experience and to stills were apparently used by Islamic alchemists about
relate the group more satisfactorily to its environment and 1,000 years ago to distill grape wine, which is why
its members to each other (C. D. Leake, in Lucia 1963, 6). some of the technical vocabulary associated with alcohol
is of Arabic origin. Alchemists originally treated distilled
The psychic power of alcoholic drinks and the ease wine as a medicine, but from the later Middle Ages it
with which they could be produced ensured that alco- began to be used for recreational purposes in parts of
holic drinks became part of the very texture of rural life Western Europe. Modern industrial distillation is based
in all areas where they were produced. They played on techniques of fractional distillation, in which the
important roles in ritual and social occasions, they sealed alcohol-bearing vapors rise through a series of plates,
commercial transactions, and they were used to treat the each containing already-condensed vapor. At each plate,
sick and anesthetize those in pain or to encourage those some of the water in the rising vapor condenses, while
entering battle. Particularly in ritual contexts, their use some of the alcohol in the condensed liquid vaporizes.
often became obligatory; even those who preferred to do The effect is similar to multiple redistillations.
without them risked becoming social outcasts if they Technically, distillation is significantly more complex
refused to drink at major ritual occasions such as reli- than fermentation, and it needs to be handled carefully if
gious festivals or marriages and funerals. However, in the resultant drink is not to contain significant quantities
urban areas, where individuals were less subject to the of poisonous by-products. This is why, though wines,
control of their families, individuals were more likely to beers, and meads were produced in many peasant house-
drink at will, so it is perhaps not surprising that the ear- holds, distilled drinks generally required specialist pro-
liest evidence of individual rather than collective drunk- duction and were more commonly traded through com-
enness seems to come from cities in ancient Egypt and mercial networks. Because they were harder to produce at
Mesopotamia. home, it was also easier to tax distilled drinks once con-
sumers acquired a taste for them. And their superior
Increasing the Potency: potency ensured that,once introduced to them,consumers
Distilled Alcoholic Drinks usually took to distilled drinks with great enthusiasm.
Distillation makes it possible to raise the concentration
of alcohol, creating alcoholic drinks of greater psychic The Psychoactive
and social potency. Distillation exploits the fact that Revolution
alcohol has lower boiling and freezing temperatures than The production and spread of distilled liquors in recent
water (respectively 78.5°C and –114.1°C). In extremely centuries count as a significant part of a global change
cold climates, it is possible to distill by leaving fermented that the historian David Courtwright has described as
drinks out in the cold. Because water freezes before alco- the “psychoactive revolution”—the sudden availability
hol, the concentration of alcohol can be increased simply through commercial channels of an unprecedented vari-
by throwing away the ice and repeating the process sev- ety and quantity of mind-altering substances. “People
eral times. However, most distillation exploits the differ- everywhere have acquired progressively more, and more
ent boiling points of water and alcohol. Fermented drinks potent, means of altering their ordinary waking con-
are boiled and the steam that results is condensed in a sciousness. One of the signal events of world history, this
separate container. Because alcohol boils sooner than development had its roots in the transoceanic commerce
water, the condensed liquid has a higher concentration of and empire building of the modern period—that is, the
alcohol than the original liquid; each new condensation years from about 1500 to 1789” (Courtwright 2000, 2).
raises the concentration of alcohol.Though rudimentary As more and more rural dwellers migrated temporarily or
forms of distillation may have existed earlier, the first pot permanently to the towns and became more and more