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XXXVIII. 



ON THE PEECENTAGE RELATIONS TO ABSOLUTE ALCOHOL 

 AND PEOOF SPIRIT OF THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES 

 IN ORDINARY USE. By HARRY NAPIER DRAPER, F.C.S., 

 F.I.C. (Plate VIII.) 



[Eead November 20, 1889.] 



The accompanying table (Plate VIII.) has been designed with the 

 view of presenting graphically the alcoholic strength of alcoholic 

 liquids commonly used as beverages or stimulants. The informa- 

 tion which it gives is to be obtained in books, but certainly not all in 

 any one book or anywhere concisety. Even among medical men and 

 chemists the conception of such relations is anything but precise. 

 Therefore the primary idea in constructing the table was that it 

 should show at once centesimally, and by the simplest calculation 

 relatively, what these relations actually are. That the information 

 thus conveyed cannot but be useful to the physician, who has at 

 one time to administer alcohol, or at another to control its use, 

 I cannot doubt. Nor can I question that there are many of the 

 general public who will feel interested in being easily able to find 

 out for themselves how much alcohol is actually present in an 

 ordinary alcohol-containing fluid. And it is not perhaps necessary 

 to point out that to those who, on the one hand, are interested in 

 the cause of temperance, and to those who, on the other, indifferent 

 to this question, have direct business interest in some one or other 

 form of alcoholic beverage, such a table can hardly fail to be 

 directly useful. The pharmaceutical chemist, for example, will 

 find the columns which express the relations of rectified spirit and 

 of proof spirit to absolute alcohol, and to each other, not without 

 importance. The brewer may take note of the small alcoholic 

 distance which separates the results of fermentation by the German 

 system, from those obtained by English methods'; and the manu- 

 facturer of mineral waters may observe that only 5 per cent, 

 of alcohol added to one of his beverages would give it the alcoholic 

 content of Lager beer. 



SCIBN. PROC. R.D.S. VOL. VI., 1'AKT VIII. 2 G 



