ther internal
or external application, an involuntary motion of all the solids and
fluids is produced by a feather touching, in the slightest manner, the
inside of our nostrils. But Boerhaave relates further, "That if
sneezing continues a long time, as it will by taking one hundredth part
of a grain of euphorbium up the nose, grievous and continued
convulsions will arise, head-aches, involuntary excretions of urine,
&c., vomitings, febrile heats, and other dreadful symptoms; and, at
last, death itself will ensue." It is therefore evident that the
slightest bodies produce the greatest changes in the human frame.

Such is the power of certain particles upon the nerves, that the
stomach will be thrown into convulsions that almost threaten an
inversion, by taking only four ounces of a wine in which so small a
portion of glass of antimony as one scruple is infused in eight pounds
of the former. And what is still more remarkable is, that the glass of
antimony remains not only undissolved, but, comparatively speaking,
undiminished in its weight.

These being a few of the fatal afflictions which experience shews to be
frequently the consequence of drinking India teas, its injurious nature
is too evident to require any further investigation of either their
ascribed or positive qualities. The next subject to be considered,
relative to India teas, is their Preparation.

Among the different authors of any consequence that have written on the
culture, preparation, and virtues of foreign teas, may be ranked
Kampfer, Postlethwaite, Dr. Cunningham, Priestley, Lemery, Franchus,
Meister, and Sigesbeck; as the limits of this Treatise will not permit
a detail of observations from the whole of these writers, remarks can
only be selected from the most principal of them. Most of the above,
and many other, authors agree that the leaves are spread upon iron
plates, and thus dried with several little furnaces contained in one
room. This mode of preparation must greatly tend to deprive the shrub
of its native juices, and to contract a rust from the iron on which it
is dried. This may probably be the cause of vitriol turning tea into an
inky blackness. We therefore do not think with Boerhaave, that the
preparers employ green vitriol for improving the colour of the finer
green teas. It may however be concluded, from the colour of bohea,
souchong, and such as are called black teas, that they may be thus
tinctured, by the means of vitriol, after t