The opposition to tea on the ground of injury to health is almost as old as the introduction of tea itself. One of the earliest objectors was Dr. Simon Pauli,[11] the Physician to the King of Denmark, in a commentary he wrote on the abuse of tobacco and tea. He objected on the ground that “tea is moderately heating, bitter, drying and astringent.” He felt it incumbent on him to warn Europeans against the abuse of tea, especially as the herb he said by no means answered the encomiums bestowed upon it by the Chinese and Japanese. “I wish all persons especially such as are old would obstinately reject _tea_, which so dries the bodies of the _Chinese_ that they can hardly spit.” Pauli was also a strong opponent of Coffee and alleged that it produced “sterility.” Another powerful writer on the subject was Dr. Cohausen a learned and ingenious German physician. The works of this author were numerous and bore evidence of the vigour of his intellect and of his application to letters. His work entitled “Neothea,” and published in 1716, was written to shew the folly of sending to China for tea, when we had so many herbs to hand, just as pleasant and far more healthy. His wit for which he was justly celebrated was not sufficiently powerful to render the use of tea unfashionable. Boerhaave, the great Dutch physician, and follower of Hippocrates and Sydenham had an objection to tea, but not so much to the herb itself as to the practice of drinking of hot liquids. He refers to those persons who “weaken their bodies with perpetual drinking of aqueous liquors; such is the very bad custom which prevails amongst the Dutch, who indulge themselves in a sedentary life, and all day long use those Asiatic drinks made of the berries of coffee or leaves of tea.”[12] He also attributed to these drinks certain nervous disorders. “I have seen a great many, so enervated by drinking too freely of those liquors (tea, coffee and the like) that they could hardly move their limbs, and likewise several who were seized with the apoplexy and palsy from that cause.”[13]