2l6 CHEMICAL, MEDICAL AND DIETICAL PROPERTIES. 



some writers as an incentive to virtue, and as unjustly 

 condemned by others as productive of numerous diseases, 

 more particularly that of causing an increase of nervous 

 complaints, which it would perhaps be more just to 

 attribute to the more complicated state of modern social 

 customs arising from an augmented population and 

 advance in luxurious living, in connection with the more 

 frequent infringement of the natural laws, especially that 

 of turning night into day, and not seldom day into night, 

 as is the too common practice of the votaries of fashion, 

 together with the abuse of stimulants, tobacco and other 

 narcotics. 



Its assailants, however, were not very distinguished, but 

 have been quite emphatic in their condemnation. Jonas 

 Hanway, a man whose follies may well be pardoned for his 

 virtues, being, perhaps, the most conspicuous of them. 

 " He looked abroad upon the world, and perceiving that 

 many things went wrong with it, and others no longer pre- 

 sented the same attractive appearance, he remembered them 

 to have had in his youth, he laid to the charge of tea all 

 the evils and disenchantments that oppressed his spirits." 

 " Men," he says, " seem to have lost their stature and 

 comeliness and women their beauty, and what Shakespeare 

 had asserted to the concealment of love in this age is 

 more frequently occasioned by the use of tea." The 

 champions of our "wholesome sage," who contended 

 that " it was far superior to the boasted Indian shrub," 

 were but a few of the host who attacked tea as " an inno- 

 vation pregnant with danger to the health and good 

 morals of the people." Others, again, although resolute 

 for its banishment from the tea-caddy, were yet willing 

 to accord it a place in the medicine chest. To such 

 complaints echoes were not wanting, the tea-drinkers, in 

 a short time, having it all their own way. 



