WESLEY CONDEMNED TEA.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 228, 27 September 1898, Page 8

WESLEY CONDEMNED TEA.

In the year 174S the question whefher tea was a wholesome beverage was still vehemently disputed in England. It was a beverage rapidly becoming of common use, though as yet not by any means national. The working man, for instance, still stuck to his tea. In that year John Wesley, who was then 45 years of age, wrote a letter to a friend on the subject. He says that twentynine years before the date, when he was only 10 years of age, soon after he went to Oxford, he was alarmed by signs of a "paralytic disorder.' Now paralysis does not often seize on boys of 16. m« hand shook in the morning; it was worse after breakfast;he observed that if he left off drinking tea it got better. He continued to be subject to this trembling of the hand for many years, all toe time drinking tea regularly. He then observed much the same phenomenon with people in London. Ho found ftiat the hand shaking was most- common with tea drinkers. He then began to consider the case; the trembling, the; weakness of nerves; the cost of teaupward of '£50 a year to himself; the saving in all ways if he could give it up.

Ho did give it up; he took to water and gruel instead. He preached abstinence from tea to others on the highest grounds—self denial, health of body, restoration of nerves and money saved which might be given to the poor, apparently he preached without much effect, if we may judge by tho returns of the importation of tea. The substitutes which he recommended were bread and' milk, oatmeal porridge, water gruel with butter and salt, tea made of sage, green balm, mint, penneroyal and other English herbs; 'foltron,' which, ho says, could bo had at any grocers. What is foltron? But it would not do. The people were quite willing to listen to his religious exhortations, but his advice as regards tea was too much for them. They went on drinking it. At last their nerves got used to it, and their hands left off the shaking.