Arthur Reade

A learned Dutchman's opinion of tea—Two hundred cups a day recommended—Tea the universal panacea—Tea-merchants greedy as hell—Degeneracy of the race through tea-drinking—Appeal to women—Tea a slow poison—Experiment upon a dog—John Wesley's attack upon tea—Why he preached against it—Dr. Lettsom's thesis—Accuses tea of leading to intemperance—The essential principle of tea—The value of experiments upon animals—Tea-drinking among women—The Anti-Teapot Society—The benefits of tea-drinking—Dr. Richardson's condemnation—The Dean of Bangor as a joker—Life without stimulants—Dr. Poore's description of the good and bad effects of tea-drinking—Injurious to children—A properly controlled appetite the safest guide.

Like tobacco, tea received on its introduction very different treatment by different people. It was extravagantly praised by some, and extravagantly denounced by others. "Some ascribe such sovereign virtues to this exotic," remarks one author, "as if 'twas able to eradicate or prevent the spring of all diseases.... Others, on the contrary, are equally severe in their censures, and impute the most pernicious consequences to it, accounting it no better than a slow but efficacious poison, and a seminary of diseases." A learned Dutchman pronounced it the infallible cure for bad health, and declared that "if mankind could be induced to drink a sufficient quantity of it, the innumerable ills to which man is subject would not only be diminished, but entirely unknown." He went so far as to express his conviction that 200 cups daily would not be too much. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, to find the Dutch East India Company liberally rewarding this eloquent apostle of the new drink. Scarcely less enthusiastic was the professor of physic in a German University, who declared tea "the defence against the enemies of health; the universal panacea which has long been sought for." This opinion, indeed, prevailed very extensively in the East. The following notice is copied from the "Relation of the Voyage to Siam by Six Jesuits, in 1685:"—"It is a civility amongst them to present betel and tea to all that visit them. Their own country supplies them with betel and areca, but they have their tea from China and Japan. All the Orientals have a particular esteem for it, because of the great virtues they find to be in it. Their physicians say that it is a sovereign medicine against the stone and pains of the head, that it allays vapours, that it cheers the mind, and strengthens the stomach. In all kinds of fevers they take it stronger than commonly, when they begin to feel the heat of the fit, and then the patient covers himself up to sweat, and it hath been very often found that this sweat wholly drives away the fever." A similar belief in the virtues of opium existed until very recently in the minds of the people of the Fen counties.

DRYING THE TEA-LEAVES. DRYING THE TEA-LEAVES.

The enemies of tea appear to have been quite as active as its friends. A German physician declared it a cause of dropsy and diabetes, and the introducer of foreign diseases, and he charged the merchants with "inexpressible frauds, calling them greedy as hell, the vilest of usurers, who lie in wait for men's purses and lives." According to Mr. Mattieu Williams, drunkenness serves one useful purpose; for it helps to get rid of the surplus population. A French physician held similar views of the use of tea and coffee; for, writing at the close of the seventeenth century, he expressed his belief, "that they are permitted by God's providence for the lessening the number of mankind by shortening life, as a kind of silent plague." Coming down to more recent times, the most remarkable production against tea appeared in 1722. The mind of the author seems to have been seriously disturbed at the prospect of the deterioration of the race, which would inevitably follow indulgence in tea. His treatise, which is addressed to ladies, is entitled "An Essay on the Nature, Use, and Abuse of Tea, in a Letter to a Lady; with an Account of its Mechanical Operation. London: printed by J. Bettenham for James Lacy at the Ship, between the Two Temple Gates, Fleet Street, 1722. Price 1s." This book contains some curious information about the diseases liable to follow the use of tea. The author begins:—

"Madam,—an earnest desire, which all ages have shown, to serve your sex will, I hope, be sufficient warrant for my troubling you with these papers. To be assisting towards the preservation of that form and beauty with which God has adorned you, is certainly a work not less pious than pleasant; for while we indulge ourselves in our greatest pleasure (which is to serve your sex), would also show our love and gratitude to the Almighty Being, whose form you so nearly represent, and to whom we are so much indebted for the blessing we received when He gave man so agreeable an helpmate. Though the value which we ought to set on this blessing is a sufficient motive to us to endeavour by all means to dissuade you from anything which may be to your detriment, yet there are other motives which oblige us to have a more particular regard to the health of your sex. For when by any means you ignore your constitutions and impair your healths, though you yourselves suffer too severely for it, yet the tragedy does not end here, for the calamity is entailed on succeeding ages, perhaps to the third and fourth generations."

The author then notes the fact that Lycurgus thought the Spartan women not in the least unworthy of his care and direction, and proceeds to remark:—

"If this lawgiver lived in these our days, what a mean opinion, what a little hope, would he have of the next age, when the women of this age fell so very short of that regularity and healthy way of living, which he looked on as necessary for the preservation of a state! With what an uneasiness would he have seen the many errors which we daily commit!—errors which are introduced by luxury, suffered through ignorance, and supported by being fashionable. He would soon have condemned the exorbitant use of tea, and upon the first observing its ill effects would certainly have prohibited the importation of it. But the present age has other considerations: tea pays too great a duty, and supports too many coaches, not to be preferred to the health of the public. Tea has too great interest to be prohibited, and I wish reason itself may be sufficient to dissuade the world from the use of it. I must confess I have so little hope from these papers, that though (to me and some others, who have had the perusal of them) they seem just and satisfactory, yet I should never have presented them to the public, had not I thought it an indispensable duty to acquaint the world with the many disorders which may possibly arise from its too frequent use."

This worthy benefactor of his species contends that tea is a slow but sure poison, and that it is "not less destructive to the animal economy than opium, or some other drugs which we have at present learned to avoid with more caution." He does not deny that tea is "useful as physic," but lays down the following propositions, which he endeavours to prove. First, that tea may attenuate the blood to any degree necessary to the production of any disease, which may arise from too thin a state of the blood. Secondly, that tea may depauper the blood, or waste the spirits, to any degree necessary to produce any disease, which may arise from too poor a blood. Third, that tea may bring on any degree whatsoever of a plethora necessary to the production of any disease, which may arise from a plethoric state of body. From an experiment upon a dog the author concludes that "tea abounds with a lixiviate salt, by whose assistance it attenuates the blood." The author draws some terrible pictures of the evils of tea-drinking, but does not presume to dictate how his readers should act. "Whether or not we ought to abandon the use of what may possibly be of so vast injury to us, I leave to every reasonable man to judge, having myself done the duty of a man and Christian in warning them of what dangers they may fall into."

On the other hand, Thomas Frost, M.D., wrote a "Discourse on Tea, with Plain and Useful Rules for Gouty People," in 1750. In this he contended that,—

"A moderate use of tea of a due strength seems better adapted to the fair sex than men, for they, naturally being of a more lax and delicate make, are more liable to a fulness of blood and juices; as also because they have less exercise or head-labours, than which nothing braces better, or gives the fibres a greater springiness; and because they are less accustomed to drink wine, whose astringency corrugates the fibres, and enables the vessels to act with greater briskness and force, so in some measure answers the end of the labour."

He holds that tea in a dietetic point of view seems in general not only harmless, but very useful, but considers it impossible to say "beforehand with what healthy persons tea will disagree, till they have used it; where it disagrees, it should immediately be left off, for there is no altering or compelling a constitution. However, where it agrees, it excels all other vegetables, foreign or domestic, for preventing sleepiness, drowsiness, or dulness, and taking off weariness or fatigue, raising the spirits safely, corroborating the memory, strengthening the judgment, quickening the invention, &c.; but then it should be drank moderately, and in the afternoon chiefly, and not made too habitual."

John Wesley, a few years later, attacked the use of tea. In 1748 he published a small tract, "Letter to a Friend concerning Tea," in which he accused tea of impairing digestion, unstringing the nerves, involving great and useless expense, and in his own case, and that of others, inducing symptoms of paralysis. But, in the first instance, he preached against tea, not because he thought it injurious, but because he wanted money. The whole of the London Methodists were at that time very poor. The Rev. L. Tyerman, in his "Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley," says,—

"This was, to say the least," adds Mr. Tyerman, "an amusing episode in Wesley's laborious life. All must give him credit for the best and most benevolent intentions, and it is right to add that, ten days after his proposal was submitted to the London Society, he had collected among his friends thirty pounds for a lending stock, and that this was soon made up to fifty, by means of which, before the year was ended, above 250 destitute persons had received acceptable relief."

The most noteworthy opponent after Wesley was Jonas Hanway, who, in 1756, wrote a bulky volume under the title of "A Journal of Eight Days' Journey from Portsmouth to Kingston-upon-Thames, to which is added an Essay on Tea, considered as Pernicious to Health, obstructing Industry, and impoverishing the Nation." The effects of tea-drinking formed the subject of Dr. Lettsom's inaugural thesis, when he sought the medical doctorate of the University of Leyden in 1767. He accused tea of inducing "excess in spirituous liquors, by reason of the weakness and debility of the system brought on by the daily habit of drinking tea, seeking a temporary relief in some cordial; of producing in some excruciating pains about the stomach, involuntary trembling and fluttering of the nerves, destruction of half your teeth at the age of twenty, without any hopes of getting new ones, depression, loss of memory, tremblings and symptoms of paralysis; and of bringing on a gradual debility and impoverished condition of the entire system."

Tea contains an active principle called theine, which, according to Dr. Sinclair, was discovered so recently as 1827. Adopting one of the methods of the opponents of tobacco, the enemies of tea conclude it to be a deadly poison from its effect upon animals. A New York dentist is reported to have boiled down a pound of young Hyson tea from a quart to half a pint, ten drops of which killed a rabbit three months old; and when boiled down to one gill, eight drops killed a cat of the same age in a few minutes. "Think of it!" exclaims an opponent of tea, "most persons who drink tea use not less than a pound in three months, and yet a pound of Hyson tea contains poison enough to kill, according to the above experiment, more than 17,000 rabbits, or nearly 200 a day! and if boiled down to a gill, it contains poison enough to kill 10,860 cats in the same space of time! How can any one in his senses believe that any human being can take poison enough into the stomach in one day to kill 185 rabbits and not suffer from it?—or that the uses of this poison can be continued from day to day without injury to health and life?"[5]

The Americans appear the most energetic in their opposition to tea. An organization called the "American Health and Temperance Association" was formed in 1879 against tobacco, tea, and coffee; and, according to one of its publications, has a membership of more than 10,000. It believes that more harm is done at the present time by tobacco, tea, and coffee, than by all forms of alcoholic drinks combined, and "the tee-total pledge of the association requires abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, opium, and all other narcotics and stimulants." The "Good Health Publishing Company," at Battle Creek, also issues tracts on the "Evil Effects of the Use of Tea and Coffee," in which it is contended that these beverages waste vital force, and injure digestion and the nervous system; and that they irritate the temper, and encourage gossip and scandal.[6]

A New York magazine, the Herald of Health, is equally unsparing in its attacks on tea-drinking:—"The habit of tea-drinking among women is one of the worst with which the hygienic physician has to contend. Very few women, comparatively, among civilized peoples are free from this vice—for vice it is—and as pronounced in its effects as either whisky or tobacco.... It is a common custom among women who do hard manual labour to depend upon their cup of tea, when they are tired, to rest them, as they say, and thus the wearied nerves are lulled to sleep and the warning voice of nature hushed, that the work may be done and the system taxed to the utmost that it is able to bear without complete exhaustion. Is it any wonder that women once broken down are so hard to restore to health again?

"On women and children its worst consequences fall. To the use of tea may be traced directly most of the prostrating nervous headaches with which so many women are afflicted; also most of the neuralgic and nervous affections. Of course children inherit the tendency to these and similar conditions, and many a puny, emaciated nervous little one is so because its mother was a tea-drunkard, and its whole system has been narcotized from the time its being began."

In England the opposition against tea has never taken an organized form, but a good deal has been said and written on the question. In 1863 or 1864 an Anti-Teapot Society was formed, but not against tea-drinking. It published a quarterly magazine called the Anti-Teapot Review. A correspondent of Notes and Queries stated that it was no enthusiastic wish to convert tea-topers into anything else that called this body into existence; it was rather a desire to oppose and to cast scorn on the narrowness of mind that seems to be encouraged in circles which, by no very violent figure of speech, may be described around a teapot. In other words, he says, the A. T. S. was a combination against modern Pharisaism, and he quotes the following extract from No. 1 of the Review, May, 1864, as proving his point:—

The article ends with the assurance that "The society will go on as it began: it will remain strictly private, enforce the same rules, and show that it is the enemy, not of tea, but of teapots." The Review professed to be edited by members of the universities, and written only by members of the Anti-Teapot Society of Europe. The qualifications for membership were, to read the rules, to fill up the form of admission to be had in English, French, German, Dutch, and other languages; to be nominated and seconded by any two officers; "the latter (sic) wholesome rule was introduced so that inquisitive people might be prevented from joining the society out of sheer curiosity." The society appears to have made no converts, and had but a very short existence.

Tea-parties have always been popular institutions among Dissenting bodies, and it is therefore not surprising to find ministers taking part in meetings advocating a reduction of the tea duties. In 1848 the Rev. Dr. Hume, attending a meeting in Liverpool for this purpose, warmly defended tea, on the ground of health, and quoted with great satisfaction the evidence of Dr. Sigmond, given before the Committee of the House of Commons. Asked what had been the result of the medical inquiries into the effect of tea upon the human frame, Doctor Sigmond replied, "I think it is of great importance in the prevention of skin disease, in comparison with any fluid we have been in the habit of drinking in former years, and also in removing glandular affections. I think scrofula has very much diminished in this country since tea has been so largely used. To those classes of society who are not of labouring habits, but who are of sedentary habits, and exercise the mind a good deal, tea is of great importance."

On the other hand, a famous physician of our time takes an entirely opposite view of the question. At the Sanitary Congress last year Dr. Richardson delivered an address on "Felicity as a Sanitary Research," and charged tea with being a promoter of infelicity. "As a rule," he says, "all agents which stimulate—that is to say, relax—the arterial tension, and so allow the blood a freer course through the organs, promote for a time felicity, but in the reaction leave depression. The alkaloid in tea, theine, has this effect. It causes a short and slight felicity. It causes in a large number of persons a long and severe and even painful sadness. There are many who never knew a day of felicity, owing to this one destroying cause. In our poorer districts, amongst the poor women of our industrial populations, our spinning, our stocking-weaving women, the misery incident to their lot is often doubled by this one agent."

The Dean of Bangor is the latest clerical opponent of tea-drinking. Speaking at a meeting held to further the establishment of courses of instruction in practical cookery in the elementary schools, he said that if he had his own way there would be much less tea-drinking among people of all classes. Oatmeal and milk produced strong, hearty, good-tempered men and women; whereas excessive tea-drinking created a generation of nervous, discontented people, who were for ever complaining of the existing order of the universe, scolding their neighbours, and sighing after the impossible. Good cooking would, he firmly believed, enable them to take far higher and more correct views of [Pg 125]
[Pg 126]
[Pg 127]existence. In fact, he suspected that too much tea-drinking, by destroying the calmness of the nerves, was acting as a dangerous revolutionary force among us. Tea-drinking, renewed three or four times a day, made men and women feel weak, and the result was that the tea-kettle went before the gin-bottle, and the physical and nervous weakness, that had its origin in the bad cookery of an ignorant wife, ended in ruin, intemperance, and disease.

The worthy Dean's denunciation of tea-drinking formed the subject of numerous leading articles in the press, followed by letters from correspondents, several of whom referred to the difficulty of finding any satisfactory substitute for the fragrant and refreshing beverage which, during the present century; has come to be regarded almost as a necessary of life in English homes, both rich and poor. One gentleman pathetically describes his feelings on being presented one afternoon in a drawing-room, where he had been in the habit of being served with "at least three cups of supernatural tea," with "a glass brimful of a dim, opaque, greyish-white liquid," which turned out to be cold barley-water.

Admitting that tea-drinking leads to indigestion, the St. James's Gazette points out that "tea-drinking is still, in itself, better than drunkenness; and there is always a chance that the first factor in the fatal series may not lead to the second, nor the second to the third. What numbers of persons of both sexes every one must know who drink tea three times a day—morning, afternoon, and evening—without ever getting drunk at all! Every one, again, must have met with cases in which men have brought themselves to utter grief through the abuse of spirituous liquors; but who ever heard of a man ruining himself or his family through excessive indulgence in tea? The confirmed tea-drinker never commits murder in his cups—never even goes home in a frantic condition to beat his wife. It is certain, on the other hand, that tea drunk in immoderate quantities does not good, but harm; and it is very desirable that, both in drinking and eating, people should on all occasions be temperate. It is difficult, however, to get through existence without stimulants of some kind; and tea is probably as little injurious as any yet discovered. 'Life without stimulants,' as a modern philosopher has remarked, 'would be a dreary waste.'"

Reviewing the discussion, the Lancet doubted whether the abuse of tea-drinking is prevalent in the country, and maintained that hard-worked minds and fatigued bodies are the better for some gentle stimulant that rouses into activity the nerves, and which ministers to animal life and comfort. The editor concluded that the worthy dean's "conclusions are drawn from insufficient premises, which in their turn can scarcely be regarded as scientific truths."

The latest medical contribution to the literature of the question is a lecture on "Coffee and Tea," by Dr. Poore, Vice-Chairman of the Council of the Parkes Museum, given at the Parkes Museum on the 6th of December, 1883. He thus describes the good and bad effects of these luxuries:—

The question of the action of tea, as well as of tobacco and other stimulants, has occupied the attention of Professor Mantegazza, an Italian physiologist of high repute. This eminent scholar places tea amongst the nervous foods; and his enthusiasm for it is unbounded. He credits it with the power of dispelling weariness and lessening the annoyances of life. He considers it the greatest friend to the man of letters, enabling him to work without fatigue; an aid to conversation, rendering it pleasant and easy. His own experience of tea is, that it revives drooping intellectual activity; and he regards it the best stimulus to exertion. "Without its aid," he says, "I should be idle." His general conclusions are that it is beneficial to adults, but injurious to children; and he pronounces it one of the greatest blessings of Providence.

Whatever may be urged in favour of tea, it is undeniable that excess is injurious, and that children would be better without it. It contains no strength, and therefore ought to be forbidden to the young. In an inquiry into the sickly condition of the children in many of the cotton factories of Lancashire, Dr. Ferguson, of Bolton, found that children between thirteen and sixteen years of age, who had been brought up on tea or coffee, increased in weight only about four pounds a year, while those fed on milk increased at the rate of about fifteen pounds a year. For this evil the blame rests entirely upon the mothers, who exceed the bounds of moderation in the use of tea. Though doctors differ widely in their views of the action of tea, they all agree that few things are more certain to produce "flatulence in the overworked female" than this beverage. Their views are shared by other authorities. Miss Barnett, speaking at the National Health Society's Exhibition last year, said, "I am constantly preaching against tea, as it is taken by the vast majority of the working women of England. They drink it at every meal, and suffer from indigestion before they come to middle age. They try to get the blackest fluid out of the tea, and in doing so draw out the tannin, which, though it has its virtues, acts upon the coats of the stomach and produces indigestion by middle life."

But the argument that tea shortens the life of every man who drinks it is absurd. "It is said," remarked Wm. Howitt, "that Mithridates could live and flourish on poisons, and, if it is true that tea or coffee is a poison, so do most of us. Wm. Hutton, the shrewd and humorous author of the histories of Birmingham and Derby, and also of a life of himself, scarcely inferior to that of Franklin in lessons of life-wisdom, said that he had been told that coffee was a slow poison, and he added that he had found it very slow, for he had drunk it more than sixty years without any ill effect. My experience of tea, as well as coffee," added Howitt, "has been the same." Howitt's experience is the experience of tens of thousands of people. The moral in this, as in other matters, is that people must judge for themselves whether tea is injurious or beneficial. As Dr. Poore candidly admits, "a properly controlled appetite, or instinct, is as safe a guide in the matters of diet as a physiologist or a moralist."