made some inquiry, and though I cannot find that these crews are wholly exempt from scorbutic maladies,, 
they seem to suffer them less than other mariners in any course of equal length. This I ascribe to the tea, 
not as possessing any medicinal qualities, but as tempting them to drink more water, to dilute their salt food 
more copiously, and perhaps to forbear punch or other strong liquors. He then proceeds in the pathetic strain, 
to tell the ladies how, by drinking tea, they injure their health, and, what is yet more dear, their beauty. 
‘To what can we ascribe the numerous complaints which prevail? how many sweet creatures of your sex 
languish with a weak digestion, low spirits, lassitudes, melancholy, and twenty disorders which in spite of 
the faculty, have yet no names, except the general one of nervous complaints ? let them change their diet, 
and among other articles leave off drinking tea, it is more than probable the greatest part of them will be 
restored to heath. Hot water is also very hurtful to the teeth. The Chinese do not drink their tea so 
hot as we do, and yet they have bad teeth. This cannot be ascribed entirely to sugar, for they use very 
little, but we all know that hot or cold things which pain the teeth, destroy them also. If we drank less 
tea, and used gentle acids for the gums and teeth, particularly sour oranges, though we had a less number of 
French dentists, I fancy this essential part of beauty would be much better preserved. 
The women in the United Provinces who sip tea from morning till night, are also as remarkable forbad 
teeth. They also look pallid, and many are troubled with certain disorders arising from a relaxed habit. The 
Portuguese ladies on the other hand, entertain with sweet-meats, and yet they have very good teeth. But 
their food in general is more of a farinaceous and vegetable kind than ours. They also drink cold water in- 
stead of sipping hot, and never taste fermented liquors; for these reasons the use of sugar does not seem to 
be at all pernicious to them. 
Men seem to have lost their stature and comeliness, and women their beauty. I am not young, but 
methinks there is not so much beauty in this land as there was. Your very chamber-maids have lost their 
bloom, I suppose by sipping tea. 5 To raise the fright still higher, he quotes an account of a pig’s tail 
scalded with tea, on which however he does not much insist. 
Of these dreadful effects, some are perhaps imaginary, and some may have another cause. That there 
is less beauty in the present race of females, than in those who entered the world with us, all of us are in- 
clined to think on whom beauty has ceased to smile, but our fathers and grandfathers made the same com- 
plaint before us, and our posterity will still find beauties irresistibly powerful.” Dr. Johnson. 
Now, then, let us take the bare cost of the use of tea. I suppose a pound of tea to last twenty days ; 
which is not nearly half an ounce every morning and evening. I allow for each mess half a pint of milk — and 
I allow three pounds of the red dirty sugar to each pound of tea. The account of expenditure would then 
stand very high, but to these must be added the amount of tea tackle, one set of which, will, upon an ave- 
rage be demolished every year. To these outgoings must be added the cost of beer at the public house; for 
some the man will have after all, and the woman too, unless they be upon the point of actual starvation. — 
Two pots a week is as little as will serve in this way ; and here is a dead loss of ninepence a week, seeing that 
two pots of beer, full as strong, and a great deal better, can be brewed at home for threepence. The account 
of the year’s tea drinking will, then, stand thus : — 
£ s. d. 
18 lbs. of Tea 4 10 0 
54 lbs. of Sugar 1 11 6 
365 pints of Milk 110 0 
Tea Tackle 0 5 0 
200 Fires ....... 0168 
30 Days’ Work 0 15 0 
Loss by going to the Public-house 119 0 
£11 7 2 
I have here estimated every thing at its very lowest. The entertainment which I have here provided 
is as poor, as mean, as miserable, as any thing short of starvation can set forth ; and yet the wretched thing 
amounts to a good third part of a good and able labourer’s wages.” — Cohbett's Cottage Economy. 
In no instance has a greater revolution taken place in the habits of a people, than in that which tea 
has effected within the last hundred years among the English. It was known, about the middle of the 
seventeenth century, rather as a curiosity than an article of use, as appears from an entry in Pepys’s gos- 
siping Diary, dated 1661, in which the writer says, that he “sent for a cup of tea, a Chinese drink, of which 
he had never drank before.” About the beginning of the last century it came more into use, and the fol- 
lowing statement exhibits the surprising strides which it has from time to time made, in the space of just 
one hundred years, towards its present consumption : — 
