QUESTION OF PHYSICAL DEGENERATION 267 



statistics are available, is due to the strain of modern life. But 

 this explanation rests on what I cannot but consider a false 

 assumption. To understand the facts we must look elsewhere. 

 Strange as it may appear, there is less practical isolation of 

 persons of unsound mind than formerly. Many after a period of 

 confinement leave the asylum " cured." This being the case, 

 the principles enunciated in the sections dealing with disease and 

 defect will account for a great deal of the increase of insanity. 



VI 



ALCOHOL 



Most races take delight in strong drink. Only after many Love of 



r 7 . strong 



centuries or the use and abuse or it do they at last attain to 



moderation. The English from early times have been noted for wteristic 

 their habit of drinking. Even on the eve of the battle of races 

 Hastings they gave themselves up to carousing, unless this is a 

 Norman slander. We read in Shakespeare : " Your Dane, your 

 German, and your swag-bellied Hollander are nothing to your 

 English." When spirits came in there were advertisements 

 posted up at the doors of inns : " Here you may be drunk for a 

 penny, dead drunk for twopence." At the present day we 

 insure at any rate that drunkenness shall not be cheap, for the 

 duty on a gallon of spirits is los. 6d., whereas in France it is 

 only 2s. lod. The very interesting paper recently issued by 

 the Board of Trade gives us some very striking figures as to the 

 consumption of alcohol in the United Kingdom. There is but 

 little wine drunk, only rather less than two-fifths of a gallon per 

 head per annum. Beer is the staple drink and on the average 

 we get through, each of us, 31^0 gallons. Of spirits we average 

 I s 1 o gallons. If this were divided equally over the whole 

 population, the weekly allowance would not be much. It would 

 amount to rather less than five pints of beer and a little less than 

 one-sixth of a pint of spirits. Ten glasses of beer and two small 

 glasses of spirits per week ! But it must be remembered that the 



