74 THE ALCOHOL PROBLEM 
in 45 per cent. of the cases occurring in men, to spirits 
alone in 42 per cent., and to beer and spirits together 
in 11 per cent.; whilst among women the proportions 
were: beer alone, 38 per cent., spirits alone, 49 per 
cent., and beer and spirits together, g per cent. These 
figures relate only to England, and if corresponding 
figures had been obtained for Scotland they would have 
relegated a far larger proportion of the drunkenness to 
spirit-drinking, for the Scotchman drinks about twice 
as much spirits per head as the Englishman, but only 
a third as much beer. Hence a combination of Scotch 
and English statistics would probably ascribe a dis- 
tinctly larger influence to spirits than to beer in the 
causation of drunkenness. 
As the available data are insufficient to warrant any- 
thing more than a rough generalisation, I have assumed 
that beer and spirits are of equal weight in the causation 
of drunkenness, whilst wine may for practical purposes 
be disregarded altogether, as the alcoholic content of 
the wine consumed is only about a fifth that of the 
spirits, and being in a more dilute form it is less harm- 
ful. In the accompanying Table* I have recorded 
the consumption of beer and spirits each year from 
1912 to 1925, relative to the average of 1912 and 1913 
taken as 100, and also the mean of each pair of per- 
centages. It will be seen that the mean value reached 
a minimum in 1918, when it was 42 per cent. on the 
1912-17 standard. After the war it rose to 72 per cent. 
* Calculated from data taken from the Alliance Year Book,” 
19277, with a correction (founded on figures recorded by G. B. 
Wilson, Brit. Journ. Inebriety, 1924, p. 9), for the 1923 to 1925 data 
of alcohol consumption, as they relate only to Great Britain and not 
the United Kinedom. as do the 1912 to 1922 data.