APPENDIX I 



263 



while champagne and the Rhine wines contain about 7 per cent. ; 

 the average is therefore taken as 1 7 per cent. Whisky contains 

 about between 50 and 60 per cent, of alcohol ; its average is 

 therefore taken at 55 per cent. 



Yearly Consumption per Capita. 



Fiom this it will be seen that if in Great Britain the sale of spirits 

 were prohibited, less than 25 per cent, alone of the immediate 

 cause of drunkenness would thereby be abolished ; or, in other 

 words, our hypothetical man would have to drink about eighty 

 extra pints only of beer in the year to achieve the same toxic 

 result — that is, less than two additional pints in each week. In 

 regard to alcoholic strength, a pint of beer is equivalent to about 

 three wineglassfuls of wine and one wineglassful of whisky. So, 

 if a man takes a wineglassful of whisky and mixes it with eighteen 

 ounces of soda water, he is drinking beer for all intoxicating 

 purposes. It may be taken as an axiom, except for the lightest 

 German beer, that the limit of drunkenness is, for the average 

 man, well within his power of imbibing fluid. The limit of 



