making up mainly the portion of the leaf insoluble in boiling water. MEDICINAL EFFECTS. The virtues of tea as a medicine have been extolled from the time of its earliest use as a beverage in China. Chin-nung, a celebrated scholar and philosopher, who existed long before Confucius, and to whom its first discovery is attributed, is claimed to have said of it: “Tea is better than wine, for it leadeth not to intoxication; it is better than water, for it doth not carry disease, neither doth it act as a poison when the wells contain foul and rotten matter;” and Lo-yu, another learned Chinese who lived during the dynasty of Tang, declared that “Tea tempers the spirits, harmonizes the mind, dispels lassitude, relieves fatigue, awakens thought, prevents drowsiness, refreshes the body and clears the perceptive faculties,” while the Emperor Kieu-lung advised all his subjects to “Drink this precious liquor at their ease, as it will chase away the five causes of sorrow. You can taste and feel, but not describe the calm state of repose produced by it.” Again, Ten Rhyne, a botanist and chemist to the Emperor of Japan, in a work published about 1730, states that “Tea purifies the blood, drives away frightful dreams, dispels malignant vapors from the brain, mitigates dizziness, dries up rheum in the eyes, corrects humors, regulates the liver, modifies the spleen, restrains sleep, restricts drowsiness, expels lassitude, is good in dropsy, makes the body lively, cheers the heart and drives away fear.” But of its sanitary effects after its first introduction into Europe there was for a long period much consternation existing, being preposterously praised by some writers as an incentive to virtue, and as unjustly condemned by others as productive of numerous diseases, more particularly that of causing an increase of nervous complaints, which it would perhaps be more just to attribute to the more complicated state of modern social customs arising from an augmented population and advance in luxurious living, in connection with the more frequent infringement of the natural laws, especially that of turning night into day, and not seldom day into night, as is the too common practice of the votaries of fashion, together with the abuse of stimulants, tobacco and other narcotics.