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Show Another Food Fad. Tea is proclaimed as an intoxicant by an inspired writer in a York, Pa., daily newspaper, who mixes some facts with a good deal of fiction in explaining explain-ing his theory. The story sounds like an emanation from the producers of coffee substitutes and is worth reading read-ing as a curiosity. The York paper says: "Those good persons who are included includ-ed in the list of tea and toast philosophers philoso-phers and tea drinkers generally will be interested in the statement of a medical authority, that the Juice of the tea leaf ranks second only to alcohol as an intoxicant. "Dr. Charles H. Scott, of the Chicago board of health, has compiled some statistics sta-tistics bearing on this subject, and he finds that all of the patients who apply ap-ply for treatment at the chief dispensary dispen-sary of the city fully 10 per cent are tea drinkers. "They are ignorant of the fact, but the symptoms of their cases point, unmistakably, un-mistakably, to overindulgence In tea, and that presumption or inquiry is confirmed con-firmed by their confessions. They suffer suf-fer from headache, vertigo, insomnia, palpitation of the heart, mental confusion, con-fusion, nightmare, nausea, hallucinations, hallucina-tions, morbid depressing of spirits and sometimes from suicidal Impulses. "Dr. Scott's investigations included patients of both sexes and of all ages. They confessed to drinking from one pint, the minimum amount admitted, to fifteen pints of tea each day. More than half of the patients were of Irish birth or descent, and nearly one-third were domestic servants. "In Ireland tea poisoning long has been recognized as a widely prevalent evil, contributing largely to the number num-ber of inmates of insane asylums, and it is well known that in this country the most inveterate drinkers of tea are domestics of Celtic origin, who apparently appar-ently bring the habit vith them to America. The evil of tea drinking is not due so much to the amount consumed as to the manner in which the liquid is prepared. pre-pared. In most of the cases which came under the observation of Dr. Scott the' victims were in the habit of throwing into the teapot an unmeasured unmeas-ured quantity of the leaves and of adding add-ing boiling water to the concoction, as long as the desire for the stimulant remained re-mained unquenched. Sometimes the leaves were kept soaking for a day or more, when a new supply of tea leaves would be thrown in "on top. the consumer con-sumer being apparently ignorant of the fact that the boiling of the tea in this manner extracts the most deleterious substances of the tea leaf. "Tea, left standing for twenty-four hours, will generate from seven to seventeen sev-enteen per cent of tannin, as well as a lot of other injurious things. This form of preparation is most prevalent among kitchen domestics, who are restricted re-stricted in the use of tea, and among shop and factory girls, who are also great tea drinkers, and it is too often practiced by other people of small means who do not wish to waste a single sin-gle leaf as long as there is any strength in it. "At best tea is not healthful, but if we must drink it, the proper way to prepare the fluid is to pour boiling water wa-ter over a given quantity in proper proportions: then allow it to stand for three or four minutes, and then drink what we need and throw the rest away. The teapot should be carefully and thonoughly cleaned before it is set aside for further use." |