I am informed likewise by a physician, of long and extensive practice in the city, that he has known several instances of a spitting of blood having been brought on, by breathing in an air loaded with the fine dust of Tea. It is customary for those who deal largely in this article to mix different kinds together, so as to suit the different palates of their customers. This is generally performed in the back part of their shops, several chests perhaps being mixed together at the same time. Those who are much employed in this work are at length very often sufferers by it; some are seized with sudden bleedings from the lungs or from the nostrils; and others attacked with violent coughs, ending in consumptions.
These circumstances are chiefly brought in sight to prove, that, besides a sedative relaxing power, there exists in Tea an active penetrating substance, which, in many constitutions, cannot fail of being productive of singular effects.
An eminent Tea-broker, after having examined in one day upwards of one hundred chests of Tea, only by smelling at them forcibly, in order to distinguish their respective qualities, was the next seized with a violent giddiness,head ache, universalspasms, and loss of speech and memory. By proper assistance, the symptoms abated, but he did not totally recover. For, though his speech returned, and his memory in some degree, yet he continued, with unequal steps, gradually losing strength, till a partial paralysis ensued, then a more general one, and at length he died. Whether this was owing to the effluvia of the Tea, may perhaps be doubted. Future accidents may possibly confirmthe suspicionsto be just or otherwise.