Xlii PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



many there is ample evidence, and the headaches and other 

 nervous symptoms so common among our young nowadays, owe 

 their origin to a great extent to the habit of tea-drinking 

 estabhshed in early childhood. In my young days milk and 

 water formed the beverage at meals of children up to the age of 

 fourteen or fifteen years ; now the infant of eighteen months or 

 two years old is frequently seen sipping tea, by no means of the 

 weakest. I have been informed by some young ladies that 

 their usual allowance of tea per diem is a cupful in the morning 

 before breakfast, one or two cups at breakfast, a cup at eleven 

 o'clock, more tea at the mid-day meal, of course the afternoon 

 tea, and again tea at the evening meal. Now tea is a strong 

 nervous stimulant, and like all other stimulants is followed by 

 depression corresponding in degree to its stimulating effects, so 

 that when indulged in habitually to any extent, it establishes a 

 craving as strong as that of the regular dram-drinker, and if 

 this craving is not satisfied a feeling of depression, headache, 

 and often irritability of temper result, so that the tea-drinkers, 

 having established the habit, find life almost unendurable 

 without a constant supply of their favourite beverage. Then 

 again, the tea usually drunk is more often a strong decoction 

 than a simple infusion. The old tea-drinker takes it strong and 

 black. Tea contains a quantity of tannin, and the effects of 

 pouring this drug into the stomach at meal-times is to retard 

 the process of digestion, and eventually so to weaken the 

 stomach as to induce dyspepsia with all its accompanying 

 miseries, one of the most prominent of which is an irritable 

 condition of the heart, giving rise to palpitation on the 

 slightest occasion, and often without any appreciable occasion. 



WHAT AEE WE TO DEINK ? 

 But the question will be asked, if we are not to drink tea, 

 what are we to drink ? Water is said to be dangerous to health 

 unless boiled, and boiled water is insipid, indigestible, and in 

 many instances disagreeable to the taste and smell. That I 

 have experienced on more than one occasion when forced to 

 drink boiled tap water. There is no doubt but that the condition 

 of the water supply to most, if not to all our communities, is 

 the reverse of satisfactory, but this condition can be removed, 

 and a pure water substituted for the present impure article by a 



