I shall finish these remarks with some reflections on this herb, considered in another light.
As luxury of every kind has augmented in proportion to the increase of foreign superfluities, it has contributed more or less its share towards the production of those low nervous diseases, which are now so frequent. Amongst these causes, excess in spirituous liquors is one of the most considerable; but the first rise of this pernicious custom is often owing to the weakness and debility of the system, brought on by the daily habit of drinking Tea[100]; the trembling hand seeks a temporary relief in some cordial, in order to refresh and excite again the enfeebled system; whereby such almost by necessity fall into a habit of intemperance, and frequently intail upon their offspring a variety of distempers, which otherwise probably would not have occurred.
Another bad consequence resulting from the universal custom of Tea-drinking, particularly affects the poor labouring people, whose daily earnings are scanty enough to procure them the necessary conveniences of life, and wholesome diet. Manyof these, too desirous of vying with their superiors, and imitating their luxuries, throw away their little earnings upon this foreign herb, and are thereby inconsiderately deprived of the means to purchase proper wholesome food for themselves and their families. In the words of Persius we may here justly exclaim,
O curas hominum quantum est in rebus inane!
O curas hominum quantum est in rebus inane!
O curas hominum quantum est in rebus inane!
I have known several miserable families thus infatuated, their emaciated children labouring under various ailments depending upon indigestion, debility, and relaxation. Some at length have been so enfeebled, that their limbs have become distorted, their countenance pale, and a marasmus has closed the tragedy[101].
These effects are not to be attributed so much to the peculiar properties of this costly vegetable, as to the want of proper food, which the expence of the former deprived these poor people from procuring. I knew a family, confiding of a mother and several children, whose fondness for Tea was so great, that three times a day, as often as their meals, which generally confided of the same articles, they regularly sent for Tea and sugar, with a morsel of bread to support nature; by which practice, and the want of a due quantity of nutritious food, they grew more enfeebled; thin, emaciated habits and weak constitutions characterised thisdistressed family, till some of the children were removed from this baneful nursery, by which they acquired tolerable health.
My valuable friend, Dr. Walker, of Leeds, in Yorkshire, has noticed, in several parts of that extensive and commercial county, and particularly in Leeds; that, “since the more plentiful introduction of Tea into the families of the industrious poor, by the late reduction of its price, the Atrophia Lactantium, or Tabes Nutricum, a species of decline, has made an unusually rapid progress. The difficulty with which animal food is procured by the lower ranks of society, in quantity sufficient for daily nutriment, has led many of them to substitute, in the place of more wholesome provisions, a cheap infusion of this foreign vegetable, whose grateful flavour (and perhaps narcotic quality, which it possesses in a small degree in common with most other ever-greens) is found to create an appetite for itself, in preference to all other kinds of aliment that the scanty income of poverty allows these deluded objects to procure; though I am sorry to have occasion to add, that the lowering effects of tea-drinking lead too many of these to seek relief from spirits, and other pernicious cordials, at the expence of health, and the sure consequences of penury and want.
“As this change, in the article of diet, has been very generally made, especially by the females, and the younger branches of the families of the manufacturing poor, their constitutions have been rendered much less able to bear evacuations of any sort, and particularly that of lactation. I may, with great truth, aver, that more than two hundred patients of this denomination have, within the last two years,come under my notice: upon their application for relief, and the consequent enquiry which I have been led to make respecting the nature of their diet, their almost invariable reply has been, that they have chiefly depended upon Tea for their support, at the same time that they were permitting an apparently healthy child to draw the whole of its nourishment from them.
“That it is debility, and an impoverished state of the whole system, arising from a deficiency in the due supply of proper and sufficiently nutritious aliment, at a time when the constitution particularly requires it, in consequence of the continual waste which the mother sustains from the suckling of her infant, which lay the foundation of this disease, and that the lungs are but secondarily or symptomatically affected, is clearly evinced from an attention to the symptoms.
“The patient first complains of languor, and general weakness; loss of appetite; fatigue after exercise, though it be of the gentlest kind; wearisome pains in the back and limbs; soon after which, symptoms of general atrophy come on; the face, in particular, grows thin, and is marked by a certain delicacy of complexion; paleness about the nose; but with a small degree of settled redness in the cheeks. In a short time, if the patient still continues to give suck, she is seized with transitory stitches in the sides, under the sternum, or in some other part of the thorax; accompanied with a short dry cough, and slight dyspnæa, upon any muscular exertion; the pulse also becomes frequent, but seldom so hard as in the inflammatory state of the genuine phthisis pulmonalis; morning sweats nextmake their appearance; abscesses and ulcers are often formed in the lungs; pus mixed with mucus is expectorated; the general weakness increases; the emaciated patient is unable to support an erect posture; and at last dies literally exhausted.”
An ingenious author observes, that as much superfluous money is expended on Tea and Sugar in this kingdom, as would maintain four millions more of subjects in bread[102]. And the author of the Farmer’s Letters calculates, that the entertainment of sipping Tea costs the poor each time as follows:
When Tea is used twice a day, the annual expence amounts to 7l. 12s. a head. And the same judicious writer estimates the bread, necessary for a labourer’s family of five persons, at 14l. 15s. 9d. per annum[103]. By which it appears, that the yearly expence of Tea, Sugar, &c. for two persons, exceeds that of the necessary article of bread, sufficient for a family of five persons.
It appears also, from a moderate calculation, that twenty-one millions of pounds of Tea[104]are annually imported into England. In the beginning of the present century the annual public sales by the East-India Company did not much exceed 50,000 pounds weight, independently of what little might be clandestinely imported. The Company’s annual sales about this time, 1797, approach to twenty millions of pounds; being an increase of four hundred fold in less than 100 years, and answers to the rate of more than a pound weight each in the course of the year, for the individuals of all ranks, sexes, and ages, throughout the British dominions in Europe and America[105].
Since the year 1797, it is probable, that the import of Tea has increased in a much greater ratio; for the East-India Company, at their sale in September 1798, put up 1,300,000 pounds of bohea; 3,500,000 pounds of congou and campoi; 400,000 pounds of souchong and pekoe; 600,000 pounds of singlo and twankay; 400,000 of hyson; hyson skin 100,000; making, in the whole, 6,300,000 pounds, the quantity sold in the autumnal quarterly sale: and it may be presumed, from the table annexed, (p. 1. Section IV.) and other documents, that at least 30,000,000 of pounds are annually imported into Europe and America!
FINIS.