Stills, spirits and bodies: a story of distillation

Abstract

Ever since spirits were discovered, around the twelfth century AD, men have assigned to them exceptional powers. Two main characteristics of alcohol have exerted a particular fascination: first, in spite of looking like water when it comes from the still, alcohol burns; second, it does not decay, and indeed it prevents bodies immersed in it from themselves going rotten.' These two characteristics were supposed to be linked to the process of production of alcohol, based on distillation, that means a separation, by the action of fire, of the different parts of a body, the most subtle being conserved, while the most terrestrial are rejected.But there were very different interpretations of the way these two characteristics were thought to act upon the body: until the sixteenth or even the seventeenth century, alcohol was thought to preserve life, but it was also soon to be considered as responsible for human spontaneous combustion,' and during the nineteenth century came to be thought of as the main agent of corporal and social disintegration.Nowadays, the negative aspects of alcohol are well known. However, the idea that it prolongs life, gives strength and cures indispositions linked with coldness or digestion is still widespread. The endurance of such ideas is what I have tried to investigate by means of a two-pronged study: first in Address for correspondence: Claudie Voisenat, Charg6e de mission, Mission du Patrimoine ethnologique, Minist6re de la Culture et de la Francophonie, 65, rue de Richelieu, Paris, France. 1 'Elle contregarde les chairs cuites ou crues de toute pourriture, si on les arrose ou trempe dans cette eau ... Son odeur fait mourir les serpents et chasse le venin' (Liébaut, 1579). These two characteristics were so important in the definition of spirits that Dujardin (1900) differentiates between the invention of the distillation of wine and the invention of alcohol. For him, even if the distillation of wine had been practised for a long time, we can only speak of the discovery of spirits when the special properties of this substance had been recognized. 2 In the middle of the nineteenth century, human spontaneous combustion, thought to strike mainly women, was considered as the extreme point of alcoholic addiction. Cf. Guionnet (1989) and Voisenat (1992).