AN ALCOHOL CENSUS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 917, 3 October 1907, Page 22

AN ALCOHOL CENSUS.

Sir James Crichton-Browne’s alcohol

census at the dinner of the Medico-Psy-chological Association at the Whitehall Rooms, when he discovered that 94 per cent, of those at the table took alcohol in some form, and “a large majority in several different forms,” has aroused much curiosity. The question naturally asked is: What did the doctors drink ? According to the dinner list there were eighty-four [persons present, of whom the majority were doctors. Now, 94 per cent, of 84, means that 79 persons consumed the wine, and in the course of the dinner it is said that these 79 imbibed—Dry sherry 4 bottles, hock (Liebfraumilch) 14, champagne 50, claret 5, Martinez’s port 9, liqueurs (mostly liqueur brandy) 31, spirits 5: total wines and spirits go|. Mineral waters, 50 bottles and 6 syphons, or about one and i-Bth bottles each, which is rather more than one bottle per head usually allowed. Sir James CrichtonBrowne’s comment at the dinner on this was that “it was a farce, or an obsession, or a gross hyperbole, to speak of alcohol as a deadly poison.”