And, as in many other cases, when the inventors are unknown, the Arabians are at once accredited with the discovery. The argument probably runs thus--_Alcohol_, _alchymy_, _alchymist_, _alembic_, have all something in common; moreover, they all begin with _al_, and _al_ is the Arabic article, _therefore_ alcohol was invented by the Arabians. So high an authority as Gibbon (_Decline and Fall_) is of opinion that ‘_they_ first invented and named the alembic for the purpose of distillation.’ Indeed, it is the commonly received opinion that their visionary hope of finding an elixir of immortal health led them to the discovery of alcohol, and entailed upon mankind a beverage which has proved to some a blessing, but to millions a curse. But the derivation of the words is the history of their origin. _Alembic_ is the Greek ἄμβιξ, a beaker, with the Arabic prefix _al_, which is intensive. _Alcohol_ is the Hebrew _Kaal_ (Chaldaic _cohal_), with the same prefix, and signifies something highly subtilised, pure spirit.[57] The Arabians owed much to other countries; they were rather restorers and improvers than inventors. They formed the link which unites ancient and modern literature; but their superstitious reverence for antiquity checked originality of ideas and freedom of thought. In respect of the discovery in question, it is certain that the invention preceded the days of the Saracens. Pliny very nearly described the process. Thus, he details the mode of obtaining an artificial quicksilver by distillation; and in another book (xv.), he speaks of the vapour arising from boiling pitch being collected on fleeces of wool spread over pots, and afterwards extracted from them by expression. Galen, the famous medical writer of the second century, speaks of distillation _per descensum_; while Zosimus, a writer of the fifth century, has given figures of a distilling apparatus which Borrichius has copied in his _Hermetis et Ægyptiorum Chemicorum Sapientia_.