ing and beneficial; for, on the
choice of proper or improper tea must greatly depend the health or
disease of the public in general. To this may be attributed the
constitution being either preserved from that innumerable train of
afflictions, which arise from too great a relaxation of the nervous
system by acute distempers, misfortunes, &c. or being so debilitated by
excessive drinking of India Tea, as to render it alone the prey of
melancholy, palsies, epilepsies, night-mares, swoonings, flatulencies,
low spirits, hysteric and hypochondriacal affections. For tea that is
pernicious is not only poison to those who, from any cause of corporal
debility or mental affliction, are liable to the above diseases;--but
it is also too frequently found to render the most healthy victims of
these alarming complaints. And as nervous disorders are the most
complicated in their distressing circumstances, the greater care should
be taken to avoid such aliments as produce them, as well as to choose
those which are the most proper for their relief and prevention. Those
who are now suffering from the inconsiderate use of improper tea, what
pitiable objects of distress and disease do they not represent for the
caution of those who may timely preserve themselves? Nervous disorders
are the most formidable, by being the most numerous in their attacks
upon the human frame. Every moment, comparatively speaking, produces
some new distress of mind or body. The imagination cannot avoid the
horrors of its own creation, while the memory is harrassed with the
shadows of departed pleasures, which serve but to encrease the pain of
existing torments. All the endearments of life are vanished to the poor
wretch who sees himself surrounded by the spectres of dismay, terror,
despondency, and melancholy. And such is but the thousandth part of the
afflictions that are to be avoided or produced by the choice of the
prevailing beverage of tea. Not only the innumerable train of nervous
afflictions, but all those disorders that arise from an improper
temperature of the fluids, may be produced from the action, corrosion,
and stimulation of pernicious teas. In proportion to the state of the
fluids, in particular constitutions, they may either prove too relaxing
or astringent, too condensing or attenuating, and too acrid or viscid;
for India teas, that to some constitutions are very diluting, may
produce in others contrary effects: therefore such should be chosen as
p