Barely a month goes by, it seems, without another report warning us about the impact heavy drinking has on our health, or newspaper headlines screaming about our shameful booze culture alongside pictures of a semi-conscious teenager lying in a pool of vomit.

Young people usually bear the brunt of these stories and, some might say, rightly so. But they are only part of the picture. There were more than a few raised eyebrows when Government research found thatHarrogate and Runnymede, places we're more likely to associate with tea shops and hanging baskets than alcoholics, were top of Britain's "hazardous drinking" league.

It proved, if nothing else, that alcohol abuse was not confined to poorer communities and could not solely be blamed on the antics of our supposedly dissolute teenagers.

Alcohol is the subject of Professor Monty Losowsky's latest lecture at the Thackray Museum, in Leeds, this weekend. Prof Losowsky, a renowned physician and Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Leeds University, will look at the history of alcohol and examine the impact it's had on society.

The museum's public lectures have been going for a decade and the professor hopes to use his talk to highlight the impact alcohol has on our lives. "I am not against alcohol at all – it has its advantages and its dis-advantages," he says, "If it is used in the right way, there is evidence to show that alcohol can improve your health. But on the other hand, it kills people."

Alcohol in Britain has a long, and sometimes unusual, history. "It goes back several thousands of years and possibly started just after the
Ice Age," he says. More recently, it turns out that breweries popped up in the most unlikely surroundings. "Monasteries and hospitals used to have their own breweries and many monasteries sold their own alcohol. Leeds General Infirmary had its own brewery and gave out alcohol to patients because before the days of anaesthetics it was the best painkiller that was available."

Prof Losowsky is among the doctors involved in the pioneering work that has made Leeds one of Britain's top transplant centres. But despite
its success, and cautionary tales such as that of George Best, he fears the dangers of excessive drinking are still being ignored.

"The evidence is that illnesses caused by alcohol are increasing and the biggest cause of alcohol-related death is liver disease. There's no doubt in Yorkshire we are drinking a lot more alcohol and the cost to the NHS in treating the effects of this is huge."

The problem of alcohol abuse, and how best to deal with it, has long been a bone of political contention, with plans to outlaw happy hours and introduce random drink tests on drivers, among those that have been discussed. Prof Losowsky believes making beer, wines and spirits more expensive would help to save lives. "The intake of beer and spirits has increased and a lot of that is to do with affordability and as alcohol has become more affordable, the number of deaths from alcohol has gone up."

He cites Finland, which cut alcohol tax in 2004, as an example. "The incidents of alcohol-related death went up by 30 per cent in women and half of that in men," he says. "Alcohol is more international than it used to be and it's also cheaper. In some supermarkets it's cheaper to buy alcohol now than it is to buy water. People come to cities like Leeds for a drinking weekend and if you go out into the city centre on a Saturday night you can clearly see evidence of binge-drinking."

He claims the advent of alcopops during the last 20 years has made alcohol more attractive to teenagers. "These drinks contain sugar, fruit juice and alcohol and this gives young people the habit of drinking from an earlier age."

Excessive drinking, though, is not simply a modern phenomenon. "If you go back to the beginning of the 20th century we were drinking more alcohol per head of the population." However, during the last 50 years consumption levels have been steadily rising.

"We need to do something because the amount of alcoholism is increasing and it doesn't just affect individuals, it affects the whole of society."

The latest in the History of Medicine lecture series takes place this Saturday at the Thackray Museum, Leeds, at 10am. Tickets cost £12. For more information visit www.thackraymuseum.org or call 0113 244 4343.