TERRORS OF TEA.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10818, 10 November 1906, Page 5 (Supplement)

TERRORS OF TEA.

FRENCH DOCTOR'S AWFUL DISCOVERIES. Dr. diaries Fernet, a French doctor, has conjured up a picture of the appalling possibilities of drinking, tea and coffee which is enough to make the hair on the heads of devotees of those beverages stand on end. The grave and serious "British Medical Journal" records that according to this medical expert the abuse of coffee has increased recently m France, where it is now quite common for people to drink a litre or more of the infusion m 24 hours, this excess being frequent among women — laundresses, seamstresses, portresses and cooks, who come m crowds to the hospitals with disorders solely attributable to this cause. It is more easily recognisable m females, since m them it is less often associated with the effects of alcohol and tobacco than m men. In even moderate quantities coffee causes general irritability and* nervous excitement, hyperesthesia, muscular agitation, palpitation, polyuria, and frequently of micturition. This he calls "acute caffeism," but the repeated and habitual use leads to "chronic caffeism," attended also by insomnia and serious disorders of digestion. So far from coffee being an "intellectual drink," it produces temporary excitement, followed by depression of mental Eower, so that those addicted to its use ecome emotional, timid, embarrassed, and are menaced by neurasthenia, with all its evil consequences. Tea, that "excellent China drink, approved by all physicians," is as harmful as coffee, if not more. Three of four cups of tea daily are by no means free from danger. The ill effects are due not only to the alkaloid it contains but to the essential oil, which has a specially poisonous action. A single cup of tea may cause excitement and insommia, while a stronger dose rarely fails to produce acute "theism," characterised by excitement, hyperaesthesia, palpitation, sweats, and occasionally by symptoms resembling those of delirium tremens, Chronic "theism" is said to be well known m China and to English and American physicians ; it is observed among teatasters, and is manifested by loss of appetite, dyspepsia, and general disorder of nutrition. The influence of tea on the heart is more marked than that of coffee. That tea (says the "British Medical Journal) is to some persons a very potent poison is probably true. In a little book recently published, Professor Saundby quotes "a distinguished member of the medical profession,'' saying: "Tea spoiled the 20 best years of my life before I found it out. It gave me awful pain, almost anginaform, with sense of palsy and weakness of the limbs and a grey face, but there was no obvious change m the radial pulse." But to most people these beverages are harmless and salutary, though it is well to bear m mind that some of these ill effects may be encountered m practice from personal idiosyncrasy or excessive use of tea and coffee.