A treatise on foreign teas: Abstracted from an ingenious work, lately published, entitled An essay on the nervesSmith, Hugh
Science
A treatise on foreign teas: Abstracted from an ingenious work, lately published, entitled An essay on the nerves
Smith, Hugh
Tea -- Health aspects; Tea -- Health aspects -- China; Tea -- Health aspects -- India
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
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