Some have attributed the injurious qualities of this fashionable exotic upon the stomach to the sugar usually drank with the Tea; but I have had sufficient opportunities of observing in the West Indies the good effects of drinking freely the juice of the sugar-cane, to obviate this objection. I have known feeble emaciated children, afflicted with worms, tumefied abdomen, and a variety of diseases, soon emerge from their complicated ailments, by drinking large draughts of this sweet liquor, and become healthy and strong[84].
“While flows the juice mellifluent from the cane,
Grudge not, my friend, to let thy slaves, each morn,
But chief the sick and young, at setting day,
Themselves regale with oft-repeated draughts
Of tepid nectar, and make labour light[85].”
That there is something in the finer green Teas, that produces effects peculiar to itself, and not to be equalled by any other substance we know, is, I believe, admitted by all who have observed, either what passes in themselves, or the accounts that others give of their feelings, after a plentiful use of this liquor. Nor are the finer kinds of bohea Teas incapable of the like influence. They affect the nerves, produce tremblings, and such a state of body for the time, as subjects it to be agitated by the most trifling causes, such as shutting a door too hastily, the sudden entrance even of a servant, and other the like causes.
I know people of both sexes, who are constantly seized with great uneasiness, anxiety, and oppression, as often as they take a single cup of Tea, who nevertheless, for the sake of company, drink several cups of warm water, mixed with sugar and milk, without the same inconvenience.