The word “salt” is traced back to the Greek “hals,” the sea, from which was formed the adjective “salos,” fluctuating (like the waves), and subsequently the Latin “sal.” Marine salt was therefore the original salt, and salts in chemistry were substances more or less resembling sea-salt. Generally, the term was limited to solids which had a taste and were soluble in water, but the notion was developed that salt was a constituent of everything, and this salt was extracted, and was liable to get a new name each time. Salt of wormwood, for instance, is one of the names which has survived as a synonym for salt of tartar, or carbonate of potash. Paracelsus insisted that all the metals were composed of salt, sulphur, and mercury, but these substances were idealised in his jargon and corresponded with the body, soul, and spirit, respectively. Lavoisier was the first chemist who sought to define salts scientifically. He regarded them as a combination of an acid with a basic oxide. But when the true nature of chlorine was discovered it was found that this definition would exclude salt itself. This led to the adoption of the terms “haloid” and “amphide” salts, the former being compounds of two elements (now the combination of chlorine, bromine, iodine, cyanogen, or fluorine with a metal), and the latter being compounds of two oxides. The names were invented by Berzelius. Since then salts have been the subjects of various modern theories, electric and other, but they are always substances in which hydrogen or a metal substituted for it is combined with a radical. In a wide sense the acids are also salts. ALCOHOL. Al-koh’l was an Arabic word indicating the sulphide of antimony so generally used by Eastern women to darken their eyebrows, eyelashes, and the eyes themselves. Similar words are found in other ancient languages. Cohal in Chaldee is related to the Hebrew kakhal used in Ezekiel, xxiii, 40, in the sense of to paint or stain. The primary meaning of alcohol therefore is a stain. Being used especially in reference to the finely levigated sulphide of antimony, the meaning was gradually extended to other impalpable powders, and in alchemical writings the alcohol of Mars, a reduced iron, the alcohol of sulphur, flowers of brimstone, and similar expressions are common. As late as 1773 Baumé, in his “Chymie Experimentale,” gives “powders of the finest tenuity” as the first definition, and “spirit of wine rectified to the utmost degree” as the second explanation of the term alcohol. As certain of the finest powders were obtained by sublimation the transfer of the word to a fluid produced by a similar method is intelligible, and thus came the alcohol of wine, which has supplanted all the other alcohols.