44 Human Physiology. 



the nation more than government, army, navy, church, edu- 

 cation, and national debt. 



The bare cost of the spirits, wines, beer, and cider, drunk 

 yearly in the United Kingdom, is more than ^100,000,000. 

 Add tobacco, opium, and other stimulants, narcotics, and 

 intoxicants, and the cost for these useless and pernicious 

 articles is much more than ;i 50,000,000. Add land and 

 labour wasted, time spent in getting drunk and sober, cost of 

 sickness produced by drink, money spent on police, lawyers, 

 magistrates, prisons, workhouses, asylums, and other charities 

 to the destitute, made so by drunkenness, and the cost will be 

 found to be more than ^200,000,000 per annum. 



The entire national expenditure of the year 1871, was 

 ^68,218,919; less than one half of the mere money loss 

 caused by the use of intoxicating substances. The physical 

 and moral losses are incalculable; but some of them will be 

 treated of in the chapter on the causes of disease and prema- 

 ture mortality. 



In the cost of drinking must be reckoned the time of all 

 persons engaged in importing, making, and selling intoxicants. 

 That enters, as well as the land wasted and produce destroyed, 

 it may be said, into the cost of the liquors, but society loses 

 all they might produce by useful industry. There were in 

 1865, 109,000 publicans, retailers of spirits in the United 

 Kingdom ; retailers of beer, not publicans, 52,566. Add 

 manufacturers and importers and their employees, and we 

 have, say, 200,000 men engaged in the liquor business 

 i to 150 of the population. If we allow five persons to 

 constitute the family of each person engaged in this business, 

 there is i in 30 of the population; one million of persons in 

 the United Kingdom supported by the liquor traffic, not 

 counting those engaged in supplying the materials of manu- 

 facture, malt, hops, &c. The grain destroyed in making 

 intoxicants was in 1869, 62,000,000 bushels. 



