Note 2032 — Chapter XX · OTHER CHRISTIAN DISCUSSION OF MAGIC BEFORE AUGUSTINE

Since writing this sentence I have found an article by Diels on the discovery of alcohol in Societas Regia Scientiarum, Abhandl. Philos.-Hist. Classe, Berlin, 1913, in which he argues from this passage in Hippolytus that the discovery was made in the Alexandrian period and that it reached western Europe again only through the Arabs about the twelfth century, since alcohol is not mentioned in the older Schlettstadt version of the Mappae clavicula. If this be so, Adelard of Bath was perhaps the first to introduce it from the Arabs or the orient, although Diels does not say so.