Upon the hillsides, in the remote land of China, there are thousands of acres of gardens filled with rows of plants, that look from a distance something like large gooseberry bushes, but which upon closer inspection more nearly resemble stunted japonica shrubs. Almost as soon as these shrubs have fully put forth their young leaves, men and women come round, and strip their twigs and branches bare. They then carry away the leaves, and dry them with much care, partly by exposure to the sunshine and air, and partly by the heat of fires of charcoal, until two-thirds of their weight have been steamed away. When the leaves are dried quickly, the shrunk and crisped foliage is of a green color. When they are left moist for a longer period, and are dried more slowly, they turn of a dull black hue. In either case, the crisped and curled leaves form the tea, portions of which are sent over the sea for the use of English tea-tables. The ground which is devoted to the growth of the tea plant, in China, would, if all joined together, form a farm nearly as large as Wales! Three millions and a half of acres are there covered with tea-bushes; and the entire produce of these acres in tea, is fifty times as large as the amount which is consumed in England. Fifty monster ships, like the Great Eastern, would not hold therefore the tea produce of a single year. Of tea, and of its allies, coffee and cocoa, the earth yields yearly not less than three thousand millions of pounds; a quantity which it would take a grocer a hundred years to weigh out, if he worked at the rate of a pound every second. More than half the inhabitants of the earth are daily engaged in the occupation of consuming this vast amount.
Although these favorite beverages are now so extensively used, this has not been very long the case. In the year 1664 the East India Company made a present to the Queen of England of two pounds of tea, considering it a very rare and choice gift. The Chinese themselves do not seem to have drunk tea generally before the seventh century. Cocoa was brought from Mexico to Spain in the middle of the sixteenth century for the first time; and coffee was not seen in London until the seventeenth century. Hence it appears that these drinks are at least not actually necessary to human beings. The forefathers of the present generation did without them for centuries.
When articles, which were scarcely known to be in existence three centuries ago, have so rapidly spread themselves through the world, that they are now viewed almost in the light of daily requisites by the larger half of mankind, it may very safely be concluded that there is some strong reason for the result. The reason may be a good one, or a bad one; the articles may be found to be of great service when employed, or they may be merely felt to produce agreeable feelings not necessarily serviceable. Is it possible to determine in which of these predicaments tea and its allies stand? As a first step towards the formation of an opinion in this matter, it will be quite worth any interested person’s while to satisfy himself by a very easy experiment that there is something in tea, which careless notice and common use would never discover. Let him simply rub a teaspoonful of dry tea leaves to powder, and place it in a flat watch-glass, standing on the hot hob of a fire-place, a piece of stiff white paper being twisted up into the form of a sugar-loaf, and covered over the watch-glass and powdered tea. So soon as the tea has become very hot, a white steam-like vapor will rise from it, and be entangled in the paper, and if the paper cap be removed after a few minutes and be unfolded, its surface will be found to be sprinkled with a white glittering powder, something like pounded glass, or very fine salt. The powder is the vapor, turned into the powdery state, after it has been entangled by the paper. There is so much of this white powder in tea, that three grains can be procured from half an ounce of the leaves. Fifty pounds of good tea would furnish a pound of the white powder.
Having found out the existence of this white powder, hidden away in the black or green leaves of tea, the next thing we have to do is to discover, if possible, what its nature and character are. The chemists have given it a learned name—that will not help us much in our present proceedings, still it may be convenient to know the curious substance by the title it bears among learned men. The chemical name of the white powder is theine. This means nothing more than the white powder contained in tea. There is another really helpful consideration, however, which naturally occurs while we look at this substance. “Where did the white powder come from?” How did it get into the tea-leaf?
The white powder of tea was formed in the leaf, when that leaf was stretched out in the Chinese sunshine, as the plant grew on the side of the warm Chinese hills. It was made out of the food which the plant sucked in from its native soil and its native winds, in the little chambers of its living structure, at a great expense of wise effort and skill. No human artist can make a grain of that white powder, if he spend a lifetime in the trial. In the little tea-leaf, as it grows on its sunshiny hillsides, the most subtle and cunning powers are set to work by the wisdom which knows everything, and by the hand which holds and directs all things in man’s wonderful world. The result is, that out of coarse earth, and thin vapors, and fostering sunshine, the ingredients of the white powder are gathered together, and mixed, each in its proper proportions, and in the right manner, in the hidden recesses of the growing plant. God, in his own sublime language, says to the Chinese soil, and atmosphere, and sunshine, “Let the white powder of the tea plant be,” and there it is.
In a world that is so overflowing with perfect contrivance as this one, which serves as man’s dwelling place, it is not at all likely that this curious white powder is made by the tea plant in such abundance—twenty-five thousand tons of it at least turned out on the Chinese hills every year, and scattered thence to the four corners of the world—without having some very good work appointed it to do. You will not wonder, therefore, that inquiring men, who know that all these thousands of tons get mixed in the ordinary course of ordered events with the flesh and blood of human bodies, should be very curious to find out what they are capable of doing there. Another very surprising fact also tends greatly to strengthen this curiosity. The coffee tree grows not in China, but in Ceylon, in Arabia, and in the West Indies. The cocoa tree flourishes on the other side of the American continent, in Mexico and Peru. Yet the coffee and cocoa plants make out of the East and West Indian, the Arabian, and the South American soils, vapors, and sunshine, exactly the same kind of white powder that the tea plant manufactures on the Chinese hills. Plants so unlike in external appearance, and living in districts so remote from each other, first get to be used in similar ways in the preparation of beverages for millions of the human race. Then curious and prying inquirers find that there is one principle present in all these beverage-yielding plants. The common-sense inference is plain. It is most likely that it is this one substance present in all the three different plants, which has led to their being employed so generally in the preparation of drink.
The experiments which the chemists have tried with this white powder, with a view to the discovery of the action it may be able to exert upon living bodies when taken into them, appear to prove simply this. When swallowed in proper quantities it has a most wonderful sustaining power. It seems as if it enabled food which is taken with it to go one-fourth part as far again in supporting the strength of the body, as it would without the addition; and if it does this, it is certainly not because it adds an equal amount of bulk to the food, for a trifling pinch of three or four grains of the powder, as much as could be laid on a silver four-penny piece, is enough for the purpose during one day. If a healthy man has half a pound of bread taken from his daily meals, and three grains of the white powder of tea added in its stead, his body does not miss the bread. The white salt of tea, coffee, and cocoa, seems to possess the power of relieving the body from the effects of wear and waste, and so of decreasing its requirement of food.
This extraordinary substance also produces another very remarkable effect on the living body, when it is swallowed in these small quantities. It cheers and enlivens, at the same time that it aids in supporting the bulk and strength of the frame. The chemist finds, when he examines its precise composition, that it is even more adapted to supply the substance which the nerves and brain lose by wear and tear, than to diminish the loss the flesh undergoes from the same cause. The white powdery ingredient of coffee and tea is most probably a rich and strong nerve-food, provided for the support of the nervous structure and brain, rather than for the nourishment of the flesh; it is nerve-making substance rather than flesh-making substance; and it exerts some mysterious and very extraordinary influence of lessening the waste of wear and tear in the structures of the living frame, without stopping their useful activity in the same degree.
In order that the nature and suspected action of this white powder of tea, coffee, and cocoa may be kept fairly in the mind, it may be well, instead of speaking of it by its learned name, to call it the nerve-food ingredient of these beverages. Some further remark might very well be made touching the probable reason why these beverages, thus rich in a nerve-strengthening food, should have come into such general use in modern times, although scarcely employed in remote ages. But it may, on the whole, be best merely to say that it is quite in accordance with the general management of the Gracious Providence who rules over man’s world, that the additional wear and tear of nerve and brain, which of necessity follows from the increase in numbers in the human race, and from the advance of the arts and civilization, should have had some counteracting compensation provided for its relief.
The best foods and the most valuable medicines are all as injurious as poisons, when they are taken in great excess. Every blessing which God has furnished to man is intended to be used, and not to be abused. Men are expected to learn how to employ them well, and how to avoid applying them improperly. The nerve-food ingredient of tea and coffee is no exception to this universal rule. When three or four grains of it are taken in the day, it refreshes and sustains; but if as much as ten grains are taken in the same time, it makes the blood flow with great rapidity through the supply-pipes of the body, and produces an uneasy feeling in the head, continued watchfulness, and trembling in the limbs. These effects, however, it must be remembered, are the results not of use, but of the abuse of the substance. The Chinese account for the sleep-banishing power of tea, when taken in excess, in this way: They say that many centuries ago there lived in the Flowery Land a holy man, who desired to spend his entire life in watching and prayer, but who was constantly catching himself napping in spite of every effort to keep himself awake. Getting at last to be very angry with the eyelids, which would not keep open, he one day determined that he would settle the business effectually by cutting them off. He put his shrewd plan into effect, and cast the offending eyelids aside upon the ground. The eyelids, however, directly took root, and grew up into two fine plants, which bore leaves, having the form of eyelids, and being fringed with hairs, like eyelashes, round their borders. The plants proved to be tea plants, and the leaves of the descendants of those plants now make amends for the offenses of their first parents, the holy man’s eyelids, by furnishing a drink which keeps sleepy people awake.