We feel an unaffected diffidence in criticising and endeavoring to improve upon the expressions of scientific men of honest purpose, but we may be pardoned for pointing the way to a more careful analysis of the merits and deficiencies of an article of diet used by so many millions of people.
We find among the ordinary effects of tea-drinking:
Exhilaration:—an elevation of feeling, a lightness of mood or spirits; a cheerfulness or even joy, which is compatible with rest. This effect may be entirely independent of pure stimulus, or of any disposition to mental or physical activity.
Stimulation:—a quickening or rousing to action of any faculty, but as usually employed, an urging to action of bodily or mental powers.
Sustaining:—enabling one to continue the expenditure of energy with less sense of fatigue, at the time, or afterwards.
Refreshing:—relieving or reviving after exertion of any kind; reanimating, invigorating; contributing to rest after fatigue.
Exciting:—in the sense of stimulation of brain and nervous system to higher tension, but not necessarily attended by disposition to labor or useful activity.
Now some tea-drinkers find in the beverage exhilaration only, a lightness of mood, but they are disposed to rest and to revery, to simply a passive meditation, or an indulgence of the imagination.
Others are stimulated to mental or to physical activity, and are sustained during such action. Afterwards they are refreshed when fatigued, by the same beverage.
Others again are nervously excited and cannot rest or sleep; but are too "nervous," as they express it, to set about any formal task, especially of a mental character.