' 684 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
into the teapot, will effectually counteract the injurious astringent 
principle, and thus confer the pleasure of Tea-drinking without 
any penalty attached thereto. The tablet is a combination of 
gelatine with alkaline salts; and, as gelatine is the chemical 
reagent of tannin, which it at once detects, and neutralizes, 
the use of this tablet justifies faith in its efficacy for making the 
drinking of Tea possible, and safe, to all digestions. The late 
Sir Andrew Clarke, who was a noted dietist, in some clinical 
remarks to his class of students, told them, with reference to 
Tea, (which he styled “a blessed beverage ’’), that “ when of 
Indian growth it produces in some persons a kind of nervous 
disturbance which is very painful to witness. Tea,” said he, 
“to be useful, should first of all be black China Tea ; the Indian 
Tea which is being cultivated has become so powerful in its 
effects upon the nervous system that a cup of it taken in the 
early morning (as many persons do) so upsets the nervous centres 
as to actually induce a state of Tea-intoxication, which it is 
distressing to see. If you require Tea for your patients, or 
yourselves, which shall refresh without doing any harm, get 
black China Tea, putting in the right measure,—the old-fashioned 
teaspoonful for each person, and one for the blessed pot; then 
pour on boiling water, and within five minutes you must pour 
it off again, or it will become wicked instead of good,” 
In Italy, Greece, and some parts of the East, where Tea is 
comparatively unknown, and never used habitually, it is 
customary when anybody feels ill, with indefinite symptoms, to 
send for a dose of Tea from the druggist. Its action on persons 
who do not drink the infusion as a regular thing, appears to be 
specially potent in arresting early signs of fever, with headache, 
and general malaise. Count Romford, Founder of the Royal 
Institution, has told how to prepare the “ burnt soup ” which 
is the mainstay of the Bavarian woodcutters, and their ordinary 
breakfast, “infinitely preferable in all respects to that most 
pernicious wash, Tea, with which the lower classes of those 
persons who inhabit this island drench their stomachs, and ruin 
their constitutions.” He adds: ‘“ When Tea is taken with a 
sufficient quantity of sugar, and of good cream, and with a large 
allowance of bread and butter, or with toast, and boiled eggs, 
and, above all, when it is not drunk too hot, it is certainly less 
_ unwholesome ; but Tea, as the poor usually take it,—a simple 
infusion of this drug, drunk boiling hot,—is undoubtedly a 
