What would England be without tea? It is difficult to imagine, but there was a time in which tea was not quite as ubiquitous in Europe as it is today. This 1780 treatise contains some interesting observations on how tea was prepared at the time, and what the benefits of tea were described to be.
By : Hugh Smith (1736 - 1789)
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As two of the four meals that form our daily subsistence are chiefly composed of tea, an enquiry into what kind is the most salutary must be as necessary as it may prove interesting and beneficial; for, on the choice of proper or improper tea must greatly depend the health or disease of the public in general. To this may be attributed the constitution being either preserved from that innumerable train of afflictions, which arise from too great a relaxation of the nervous system by acute distempers, misfortunes, &c. or being so debilitated by excessive drinking of India Tea, as to render it alone the prey of melancholy, palsies, epilepsies, night-mares, swoonings, flatulencies, low spirits, hysteric and hypochondriacal affections. For tea that is pernicious is not only poison to those who, from any cause of corporal debility or mental affliction, are liable to the above diseases;—but it is also too frequently found to render the most healthy victims of these alarming complaints. And as nervous disorders are the most complicated in their distressing circumstances, the greater care should be taken to avoid such aliments as produce them, as well as to choose those which are the most proper for their relief and prevention. Those who are now suffering from the inconsiderate use of improper tea, what pitiable objects of distress and disease do they not represent for the caution of those who may timely preserve themselves? Nervous disorders are the most formidable, by being the most numerous in their attacks upon the human frame. Every moment, comparatively speaking, produces some new distress of mind or body. The imagination cannot avoid the horrors of its own creation, while the memory is harrassed with the shadows of departed pleasures, which serve but to encrease the pain of existing torments. All the endearments of life are vanished to the poor wretch who sees himself surrounded by the spectres of dismay, terror, despondency, and melancholy. And such is but the thousandth part of the afflictions that are to be avoided or produced by the choice of the prevailing beverage of tea. Not only the innumerable train of nervous afflictions, but all those disorders that arise from an improper temperature of the fluids, may be produced from the action, corrosion, and stimulation of pernicious teas. In proportion to the state of the fluids, in particular constitutions, they may either prove too relaxing or astringent, too condensing or attenuating, and too acrid or viscid; for India teas, that to some constitutions are very diluting, may produce in others contrary effects: therefore such should be chosen as possess a combination of quality that may render them, as nearly as possible, to a general specific. But this cannot be well expected where one single ingredient is used, and that is distinguished for its particular qualities, which, if wholesome, can only be such to those whose fluids are so, by nature or circumstances, as to require such a particular assistant; for to every other state of the fluids they must be pernicious. It is consequently evident, that if teas imported from India have any virtues, they cannot be such as to render them worthy of being universally adopted as a general aliment. If wholesome to a few, they must be pernicious to the rest of mankind, with whose constitutions they have no congeniality, medicinal or alimentary virtue. Supposing they may possess some physical properties, like all other medicines, they can only benefit such disorders as nature particularly formed them to relieve. Those who have been advocates for their positive virtues have, in this instance, but more confirmed the impropriety of adopting them as a general morning and evening beverage. This only explains more evidently the cause of so many being injured, where one is benefited, by drinking constantly India tea. There cannot possibly be stated a more self-evident proposition than where any simple or combined matter is adopted for a particular purpose, it must, in every opposite instance, prove injurious. In proportion, therefore, to such particular qualities, they are the more improper to be generally and indiscriminately adopted. This observation, although it may be applied to every art or science, is still more applicable to physic. Thus is it found that no medicine can be safely taken as a constant and general aliment. Even those who, at first, might find it beneficial in their respective complaints, have too frequently found the constant use of it afterwards hurtful to the constitution it had before relieved. It may be deduced, from the above considerations, that India teas, however physically beneficial, to allow them all their best of praise, must be as an aliment generally injurious. Instead of preserving health, they sow innumerable disorders, which can only be cured by substituting a beverage from such salutary native or exotic herbs as are formed for the particular afflictions the former have so pitiably brought upon the too greater part of mankind.
As almost every disorder to which the human frame is liable may be retarded in its cure, if not confirmed in the constitution, by the power of secretion being weakened, India teas are the most dangerous that can be possibly used as a general beverage. By too much dilating the canals, the concussive force of the sides is increased, which destroys the oscillatory motion, and thus are the secretions altered and disturbed; and as the action of medicines consists in removing impediments to the equal motion of the fluids, the greater care should be taken to abstain from all food or drink that may increase those impediments. That India teas not only increase but occasion such evils is evident, from their having been experienced to relax the tone and reduce the consistence of the solids. As the powers of secretion depend upon the just equilibrium of force between the solids and the liquids, the latter must, in the above instance, make a greater impetus upon one part than another, from which proceeds that morbid state so justly and emphatically termed Disease. Thus, according to the learned Boerhaave, to heal is to take away the disease from the body; that is, to remove and expel the causes which hinder the equal motion or transflux. Medicines, he says, are those mechanical instruments by which an artist may remove the causes of the balance being destroyed, and thus re-instate the lost equilibrium of solids and liquids. He therefore concludes, that a medicine supposes a flowing of the humours or liquids; that it operates mechanically; that it acts only mediately; that its good or bad effects depend entirely on the bulk, motion, and figure of the acting particles, and that the destruction of the balance must be deduced from the solids. So that, as it has been found that the solids are wasted and impaired by the constant use of India tea, the chief cause of disease, in general, may be attributed to such a pernicious custom; even the properties which he ascribes to medicines are in direct opposition to what have been found to be the prevailing effects of teas imported into Europe. It is consequently evident, that the drinking of this injurious tea being not only, in its operation, productive of disease in its general sense, but also repugnant to the salutary operation of medicine, it is the most dangerous beverage that can be generally taken; for it appears, from the above consideration, that its pernicious effects are not confined to any system of disorders; it is found inimical to the first principles of health, and therefore may be justly dreaded as capable of being the source of disease indefinitely understood.
Having thus stated, as an Introduction to this Essay on Teas, the general tendency of those imported from India, under the titles of Green, Souchong, and Bohea, to injure the constitution, the following pages will be particularly devoted to the consideration of the nature, preparation, and manner of using, and the effects of such foreign teas.
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