66 A STUDY IN HEREDITY 



which has separate sections for abstainers and non- 

 abstainers. Needless to say, this ofiBce, Hke all 

 others, rejects inebriates. But since inebriates can 

 be detected by the examining physicians only when 

 they are obviously suffering from the immediate or 

 the remote effects of alcoholism, doubtless many 

 inebriates are accepted, who would be rejected were 

 the truth concerning them known. All, except 

 fanatical abstainers, are agreed that strictly moderate 

 drinking influences the death-rate little, if at all. 

 Thus few would maintain that the lives of the 

 temperate Spanish or Italian peasants are shortened 

 by their habitual use of alcohol. Alcohol takes its 

 toll almost exclusively from the ranks of habitual 

 soakers or drunkards. If, then, insurance statistics 

 prove that abstainers on the average have lives 

 appreciably, or considerably, longer than non- 

 abstainers, this fact must be taken as indicating 

 that there are among the latter a proportion of 

 excessive drinkers, who have been accepted through 

 error or fraud. Insurance companies make their 

 financial arrangements on a basis of " expected 

 deaths," which, when tested by " actual deaths," 

 leaves, or should leave, a safe margin for profit. 

 Dr Ridge thus sums up the statistics of the office 

 under consideration : — 



" The expected and actual claims in each section for the 

 last twenty years have been published. . . . This gives a 

 mortality in the Temperance Section of 71.49 per cent., and in 



