The blood flows with difficulty in weak persons, stagnates, obstructs, not on account of its own density, but by the feeble contraction of the vessels, which is increased by hard drinking. The stomach first feels the disorder; because the liquors prepared by nature for the business of digestion, being immersed in the liquors that are drank, become unable to perform their functions, and the food is imperfectly dissolved on account of the imperfection of the menstruums. The fibres of the stomach, being too much stretched, at first give pain, and soon after lose their force, and become unable to push forward the aliments: they therefore load the stomach by being stopped: to cure which the sick persons again have recourse to drinking, which with the force of a torrent drives these half-digested aliments to the intestines. All these symptoms grow worse if warm beverages are drank; for this is the force of heat, it both relaxes the fibres, and, by more powerfully dissolving the phlegm, occasions more severe pains in the stomach. Amongst the favourite beverages of the learned, the worst is the infusion of that famous leaf, so well known by the name of tea, which, to our great detriment, has every year, for these two centuries past, been constantly imported from China and Japan. This most pernicious gift first destroys the strength of the stomach, and, if it be not soon laid aside, equally destroys that of the viscera, the blood, the nerves; and of the whole body; so that malignant and all chronical disorders will appear to increase, especially nervous disorders, in proportion as the use of tea becomes common: and you may easily form a judgment from the diseases that prevail in every country, whether the inhabitants of it are lovers of tea, or the contrary. How happy would it be for Europe, if by unanimous consent the importation of this infamous leaf were prohibited, which is endued only with a corrosive force, derived from the acrimony of the gum with which it is pregnant: for experience shews, that what it has of an astringent principle is lost in the warm water.