CHAPTER VII.
THE FRIENDS AND THE FOES OF TEA.
A learned Dutchman's opinion of tea—Two hundred cups a day recommended—Tea the universal panacea—Tea-merchants greedy as hell—Degeneracy of the race through tea-drinking—Appeal to women—Tea a slow poison—Experiment upon a dog—John Wesley's attack upon tea—Why he preached against it—Dr. Lettsom's thesis—Accuses tea of leading to intemperance—The essential principle of tea—The value of experiments upon animals—Tea-drinking among women—The Anti-Teapot Society—The benefits of tea-drinking—Dr. Richardson's condemnation—The Dean of Bangor as a joker—Life without stimulants—Dr. Poore's description of the good and bad effects of tea-drinking—Injurious to children—A properly controlled appetite the safest guide.
Like tobacco, tea received on its introduction very different treatment by different people. It was extravagantly praised by some, and extravagantly denounced by others. "Some ascribe such sovereign virtues to this exotic," remarks one author, "as if 'twas able to eradicate or prevent the spring of all diseases.... Others, on the contrary, are equally severe in their censures, and impute the most pernicious consequences to it, accounting it no better than a slow but efficacious poison, and a seminary of diseases." A learned Dutchman pronounced it the infallible cure for bad health, and declared that "if mankind could be induced to drink a sufficient quantity of it, the innumerable ills to which man is subject would not only be diminished, but entirely unknown." He went so far as to express his conviction that 200 cups daily would not be too much. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, to find the Dutch East India Company liberally rewarding this eloquent apostle of the new drink. Scarcely less enthusiastic was the professor of physic in a German University, who declared tea "the defence against the enemies of health; the universal panacea which has long been sought for." This opinion, indeed, prevailed very extensively in the East. The following notice is copied from the "Relation of the Voyage to Siam by Six Jesuits, in 1685:"—"It is a civility amongst them to present betel and tea to all that visit them. Their own country supplies them with betel and areca, but they have their tea from China and Japan. All the Orientals have a particular esteem for it, because of the great virtues they find to be in it. Their physicians say that it is a sovereign medicine against the stone and pains of the head, that it allays vapours, that it cheers the mind, and strengthens the stomach. In all kinds of fevers they take it stronger than commonly, when they begin to feel the heat of the fit, and then the patient covers himself up to sweat, and it hath been very often found that this sweat wholly drives away the fever." A similar belief in the virtues of opium existed until very recently in the minds of the people of the Fen counties.
DRYING THE TEA-LEAVES.
The enemies of tea appear to have been quite as active as its friends. A German physician declared it a cause of dropsy and diabetes, and the introducer of foreign diseases, and he charged the merchants with "inexpressible frauds, calling them greedy as hell, the vilest of usurers, who lie in wait for men's purses and lives." According to Mr. Mattieu Williams, drunkenness serves one useful purpose; for it helps to get rid of the surplus population. A French physician held similar views of the use of tea and coffee; for, writing at the close of the seventeenth century, he expressed his belief, "that they are permitted by God's providence for the lessening the number of mankind by shortening life, as a kind of silent plague." Coming down to more recent times, the most remarkable production against tea appeared in 1722. The mind of the author seems to have been seriously disturbed at the prospect of the deterioration of the race, which would inevitably follow indulgence in tea. His treatise, which is addressed to ladies, is entitled "An Essay on the Nature, Use, and Abuse of Tea, in a Letter to a Lady; with an Account of its Mechanical Operation. London: printed by J. Bettenham for James Lacy at the Ship, between the Two Temple Gates, Fleet Street, 1722. Price 1s." This book contains some curious information about the diseases liable to follow the use of tea. The author begins:—
"Madam,—an earnest desire, which all ages have shown, to serve your sex will, I hope, be sufficient warrant for my troubling you with these papers. To be assisting towards the preservation of that form and beauty with which God has adorned you, is certainly a work not less pious than pleasant; for while we indulge ourselves in our greatest pleasure (which is to serve your sex), would also show our love and gratitude to the Almighty Being, whose form you so nearly represent, and to whom we are so much indebted for the blessing we received when He gave man so agreeable an helpmate. Though the value which we ought to set on this blessing is a sufficient motive to us to endeavour by all means to dissuade you from anything which may be to your detriment, yet there are other motives which oblige us to have a more particular regard to the health of your sex. For when by any means you ignore your constitutions and impair your healths, though you yourselves suffer too severely for it, yet the tragedy does not end here, for the calamity is entailed on succeeding ages, perhaps to the third and fourth generations."
The author then notes the fact that Lycurgus thought the Spartan women not in the least unworthy of his care and direction, and proceeds to remark:—
"If this lawgiver lived in these our days, what a mean opinion, what a little hope, would he have of the next age, when the women of this age fell so very short of that regularity and healthy way of living, which he looked on as necessary for the preservation of a state! With what an uneasiness would he have seen the many errors which we daily commit!—errors which are introduced by luxury, suffered through ignorance, and supported by being fashionable. He would soon have condemned the exorbitant use of tea, and upon the first observing its ill effects would certainly have prohibited the importation of it. But the present age has other considerations: tea pays too great a duty, and supports too many coaches, not to be preferred to the health of the public. Tea has too great interest to be prohibited, and I wish reason itself may be sufficient to dissuade the world from the use of it. I must confess I have so little hope from these papers, that though (to me and some others, who have had the perusal of them) they seem just and satisfactory, yet I should never have presented them to the public, had not I thought it an indispensable duty to acquaint the world with the many disorders which may possibly arise from its too frequent use."