Tea; Tea -- History; Tea -- Social aspects; Tea trade -- History
Others again are nervously excited and cannot rest or sleep; but
are too "nervous," as they express it, to set about any formal
task, especially of a mental character.
We have known tea-drinkers, too, who after a hard day's toil,
could drink two or three cups of strong tea and lie down to sleep
for the night as quietly as babes are expected to--but do not.
It must be evident that each person should observe the effects of
tea upon himself or herself and be governed accordingly. Tea is a
poison to some temperaments, and so are strawberries. Tea will
cure a headache or may produce one; will dispose to rest or
excite to action. We will sum then by conceding that all our
quoted authorities are right in their conclusions, if limited to
a limited class of tea-drinkers, and all are wrong, in a very
broad application.
Theine is the one constant agency in the effects of tea. It is
present in teas that are devoid of essential oils--so far as the
senses go--and it then still refreshes, stimulates, sustains,
and even exhilarates, by actual experiment.
The feeling of "comfort," attributed by some writers to the hot
water of the tea, may be also enjoyed by drinking cold tea, which
is no less refreshing in hot weather. The high-flavored essential
oils (strictly oils which evaporate at very moderate
temperatures) of Formosa teas seem to take part in the superior
exhilarating or almost intoxicating effects of the choice
varieties, but we have no certain proof of the fact; while the
more intoxicating and stimulating, as well as deleterious, green
teas possess very little, if any, of these pleasant oils.
It seems to be an authodox opinion among physiologists that tea
contributes nothing towards support of the human system; that it
only rouses it into action, an effect which should, consistently,
be followed by corresponding reaction and depression, which
plainly is not the case. This hypothesis leaves the enquiring
layman in a dilemma. Tea must either enable the system to draw
more heavily or more economically upon the resources afforded by
recognized food, or it is itself nutriment. Otherwise, an
established principle of physics--that there can be no
expenditure of energy without correlative cost--would be
subverted. As tea is admitted upon experience to be most useful,
and most craved by mankind, where the supply of food is
insufficient; and as it is known to refresh and sustain in large
degree in the absence of any food whatever, there is fair ground
for the opinion, however heterodox, that tea directly affords
nutriment to the human organism, and, possibly, to the brain and
nerves in particular, as with phosphoric acid.
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