372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



take stimulants at all hours, and only the other day a nobleman 

 told me that, visiting a certain house, his valet came into his bed- 

 room at ten in the morning bringing a pint of champagne. On 

 his telling him he did not want it, his valet said, " If your lord- 

 ship does not drink it, they will think you are ill ! " " His lord- 

 ship " did not drink it, but the champagne did not go down to 

 frighten his host. I imagine gout must be a permanent institu- 

 tion in that household, and that the family vault must be as well 

 stocked as the wine-cellar. 



In the summer acidulated drinks are the most grateful to the 

 palate, and in the August number of this journal last year I gave 

 a number of these in an article called Beverages for Hot Weather. 

 There can be no doubt that the most refreshing beverage in sum- 

 mer, and certainly the most harmless, is the properly made cup of 

 tea ; but, alas ! how seldom does the ordinary English household 

 in England get a properly made cup of tea or coffee ! The first 

 cup may be by chance drinkable, or it may have infused half an 

 hour, and therefore contain all the tannin and other disagreeable 

 and injurious products of the leaf. Now, while on the subject of 

 tea, I should like to give a rational and sensible mode of making 

 it for breakfast or other meal with which it may be taken. Any 

 one walking up or down Shaftesbury Avenue, W., will see in a 

 window half a dozen cups that he might reasonably imagine had 

 been bequeathed the establishment by Goliath of Gath. These tea- 

 cups are called magnums, and they hold exactly a pint, and one 

 of them is sufficient, therefore, or more than sufficient, for a 

 breakfast. To secure a delicious cup of tea, the proper quantity 

 should be put into the teapot according to the number of people 

 requiring a supply, and when it has infused nine or ten minutes 

 not longer the magnum, as it is called, should be filled. This 

 being sufficient, and equal to two large breakfast cups, is of uni- 

 form strength and flavor throughout. Its contents will please 

 the most fastidious taste and suit the most delicate stomach. In 

 the summer time it should be sweetened with saccharine instead 

 of sugar, and flavored with a little cream. Some prefer tea with 

 a squeeze of lemon-juice in it, and in this way it is possibly 

 more wholesome and suitable as a cooling beverage. 



It would occupy too great a space in a short article like this to 

 give the most suitable fruits and vegetables for the summer 

 months to the different conditions of the system. In a dietetic 

 work I wrote some two years ago this subject was fully dis- 

 cussed,* more particularly in relation to those of corpulent, 

 gouty, and rheumatic habit of body. 



Three quarters of the ailments that humanity is subject to 



* Foods for the Fat. 



