TEA AND TOBACCO INSANITY.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 10017, 15 June 1895, Page 5

TEA AND TOBACCO INSANITY.

A report upon insanity in Ireland which bas just been issued enumerates among the causes of mental failure the innutritions dietary of the poorer population — tending to produce anaemia and oonstutional weakness, which favour the development of scrofulous and neurotic disease — and the immoderate ÜBe of certain nervous atimulants, particularly tea and tobicoo. " While the moderate use of properly prepared tea," the report add 9, "is regarded as Innocuous or even beneficial in its action on the nervous system, its ill effects, when deoooted or overin fused, on persona who make it their staple article of dietary, are dwelt on by almost all the resident medical superintendents in their several reports. Undoubtedly the method of preparation adapted, and the excessive use of this article of diet, now so general among our poorer population, tends to tho production of dyspepsia, whioh in its turn leads to states of mental depression highly favourable to the production of the various forma of neurotio disturbance.

Tho excessive uso of tobaooo, also, especially among the young, whether by cmoking or chewine, in the opinion of certain of our medioal superintendents, aots, though, perhaps, in a miuor degree, injuriously on the nervous centres."