44 



TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



poor. It is important also to remember that beer 

 in large quantities is certainly a depressant, and 

 that no greater mistake can be made than to give 

 it freely to laboring-men while at work with the 

 view of strengthening them. Bearing on this 

 point, Dr. Parkes gives a very interesting account 

 of the use of a drink of thin boiled oatmeal dur- 

 ing some extremely heavy work lately performed 

 on the Great Western Railway during the change 

 from the broad to the narrow gauge : 



" It was necessary to take up and relay the rails 

 in the shortest possible time, and the same men 

 were obliged to be kept at work for many hours 

 (sometimes eighteen hours in the day). The sum- 

 mer days were chosen, so that almost literally the 

 men worked night and day, stopping only for meals 

 and a little sleep. They took their ordinary meals, 

 and beer with their meals if they pleased, but dur- 

 ing the long periods of the work they were sup- 

 plied with nothing but a drink of oatmeal boiled 

 in water, and beer and spirits were prohibited. 

 Each man had an allowance per diem of one pound 

 of oatmeal and half a pound of sugar, and so im- 

 portant was this deemed that a man was told off 

 specially for every twenty men, and was solely em- 

 ployed in boiling and taking the oatmeal-drink to 

 the men. This liquid was drunk in large quan- 

 tities, and was most highly approved of. The 

 character of the work and the temper of the men 

 were much better, in the opinion of the engineers, 

 than would have been the case if beer and spirits 

 had been issued." 1 



In speaking of the use of alcoholic beverages 

 lhave frequently had to employ the word " moder- 

 ate," and the question may well be asked, "What 

 does this word mean ? " It has been calculated 

 that the daily consumption of an ounce and a half 

 of absolute alcohol is the limit of moderation for 

 a strong, healthy man, and this will correspond 

 pretty nearly with three ounces of brandy (i. e., 

 rather less than the third of half a pint), rather 

 less than half a pint of the stronger wines, such 

 as port and sherry, rather less than a pint of the 

 weaker wines, such us claret and hock, and a pint 

 and a half of beer. 



The non-alcoholic class of stimulating bev- 

 erages must now receive a brief consideration. 

 There exists some doubt as to the precise date 

 when the use of tea, coffee, and chocolate, became 

 general in this country. In " Pepys's Diary " 

 there is the following entry under September 25, 

 1661 : " I sent for a cup of tea (a Chinese drink), 

 of which I had never drunk before." And Isaac 

 Disraeli states that he had heard of Oliver Crom- 



1 Parkes : " On the Issue of a Spirit Ration during 

 the Ashantee Campaigu." 



well's teapot in the possession of a collector. In 

 1660 the price of tea is stated to have been sixty 

 shillings the pound, and it does not seem to have 

 been introduced into general use until the begin- 

 ning of the eighteenth century. Its adoption as 

 a popular beverage was strenuously opposed by 

 many. " In Germany, Hahnemann considered tea- 

 dealers as immoral members of society, lying in 

 wait for men's purses and lives." ] He was equal- 

 ly opposed to the use of coffee. " Hahnemann se 

 desolait de l'abus que ses compatriotes faisaient 

 du cafe. II lui reprochait d'avoir altere le carac, 

 tere national, detruit la solidite du jugement, la 

 fermete de volonte chez le peuple allemand, pour 

 ne lui laisser que de la loquacite, de la vacillation 

 et de la mobilite fugitive ! " 2 In an article on 

 Duncan Forbes in the Edinburgh Review, of 1816, 

 the writer, alluding to the fact that Duncan 

 Forbes had presented to the Government a scheme 

 for punishing the use of tea, likens the progress 

 of this famous plant to the progress of truth — 

 " suspected at first, though very palatable to those 

 who had courage to taste it ; resisted as it en- 

 croached ; abused as its popularity seemed to 

 spread ; and establishing its triumph at last, in 

 cheering the whole land, from the palace to the 

 cottage, only by the slow and resistless efforts of 

 time and its own virtues." 



But it must be admitted that the abuse of tea 

 and coffee may be attended by serious injuries to 

 the human organism. The pernicious effect of 

 the active principle of coffee — caffeine, which is 

 identical with theine, the active principle of tea 

 — on certain animals is well shown in an elaborate 

 paper by Dr. Leven, which I have already men- 

 tioned. He found that one to ten centigrammes 

 of caffeine acted as a fatal poison when given to 

 frogs, first quickening the action of the heart and 

 the respiratory organs, and then inducing a te- 

 tanic state. To Guinea-pigs fifteen to twenty cen- 

 tigrammes proved fatal, first increasing the action 

 of the heart, which in one instance was so rapid 

 that the pulsation could not be counted, and then 

 followed by paralysis of that organ. The same 

 results were obtained with rabbits. One gramme 

 given to a dog did not prove poisonous ; it in- 

 creased the activity of the heart and the respira- 

 tory and secretory organs, but after three or four 

 hours the symptoms disappeared. 



M. Leven, in short, established as the result 

 of his experiments that the active principle of 



1 Disraeli's "Curiosities of Literature." 



2 Docteur M. Leven: "Action Phyeiologiqne et 

 Medicamenteuse de la Cafeine," Archives de Phytiolo- 

 ffie, 1868. 



