TEA DRUNKENNESS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2677, 5 July 1905, Page 13

TEA DRUNKENNESS.

Mr J. H. Clarke, who sp/eaks. as a, I^ondon ni'ichea] practitioner of 30 years' standing, has something very disquieting to say about tea drinliing. He declares that many people do not understand 'how it is they h«ve suoh an appetite for tea, when they have little or no care for any other meal — if we except the morning cup of tea brought up to the bedroom, without which they would never get up at all. The reaspn is this: The sinking, empty feeling, accompanied often by irrit&r bility, low spirits and shortness of temper, means that the stimulating effect of- the lasi dose of tea is passing off, and the stage ot leaction setting in. It is just the same with the tea. drinker as it is with the alcohol drinker : when the effect of the last dram is r.fv,ssing off ai- other must be taken to keep up the stimulating effect. Thus the vicious circle is kept up.

And what is the effect of it? The- effect is an increased wear and tear on ihe nervous system. Tea belongs to a group of nervo stimulants, of which erythroxylon coc-a (tho source of cocaine), coffee and cocoa are also members which enables a person to get niOM out of himself in the shape of mental cr bodily energy than he would be able to get without them. This is drawing a bill on the bank of hiis nervous system, of course, and the bill will have to be met. If the emeigency is a passing one, the bill will be met by feed and rest, and no great harm will l>3 dc-ne. But this is not the usual case, and when once a habit is established an abnormal rate of wear and tear will go on, and this results in a fruitful crop of cases of that latter day fashionable complaint — neurasthenia. Tea is the parent of much neurasthenia.

Allied to neurasthenia, and npaa-ly always associated with it, is dyspepsia of the nervous or flatulent type. Tea can produce any one of these and fill combined. Another effect of tea is to produce ansemia. Servant girls are nearly all great tea drinkers, and drinkers of the strongest kinds of tea. To this habic much of the anjeniia, and dyspepsia from which they suffer is due. Tea contains not only theiin — the active principle which has the stimulating action on the nerves— but also much tannin. It is owing to this latter that much of its indiges-tion-cfausing properties are due. "High teas" are a digestive atrocity. Tea turns meat into leather; and all who are not equal to digesting leather should carefully avoid this mixture

The cheaper teas, so nnich in nse now — those which give the people " the most for their money " — contain the most tannin A tea taster informs in* thac if tho infusion of these teas as left in tho tasting cups for any time it will eat off the emuueh From which it is easy to understand the effect the infusion produces on the human stomach. It would almost Fecm that the human animal is determined to assert his supenority over all the rest of creation by the ingenuity he displays in discovering or manufacturing pleasant "poisons for himself. The great majority of mankind are the slaves to one or n.iore poison habits. Of the=e habits, the tea habit is one of the most subtle, insinuating, !«ig irjjuriou&j