I did not mean that they literally put gin in a pint glass and downed the whole pint in a few gulps - the author did not say how exactly they drank it. But what

I did not mean that they literally put gin in a pint glass and downed the whole pint in a few gulps - the author did not say how exactly they drank it. But what he made clear was that in total quantity drunk, for some, it was the same. Two things give some perspective on this. First, at the time in England, people did not really drink water. They drank ale as their primary drink. So they consumed a lot of alcohol on a regular basis. Two, they didn't really know they were consuming alcohol. It took some time for people to establish that the chemical that caused intoxication in distilled spirits, beer and wine was the same chemical. (Because of this, initial temperance movements were exclusively about spirits.) So people didn't have a clear basis for reasoning that this new thing could potentially harm them.