The Chemistry of Cookery

is unquestionably true that such may be done; that the tea-drinker is languid and weary at tea-time, whatever be the hour, and that the refreshment produced by ‘the cup that cheers’ and is _said_ not to inebriate, is almost instantaneous. What is the true significance of these facts? The refreshment is certainly not due to nutrition, not to the rebuilding of any worn-out or exhausted organic tissue. The total quantity of material conveyed from the tea-leaves into the water is ridiculously too small for the performance of any such nutritive function; and besides this, the action is far too rapid, there is not sufficient time for the conversion of even that minute quantity into organised working tissue. The action cannot be that of a food, but is purely and simply that of a stimulating or irritant drug, acting directly and abnormally on the nervous system. The five-o’clock lassitude and craving is neither more nor less than the reaction induced by the habitual abnormal stimulation; or otherwise, and quite fairly, stated, it is the outward symptom of a diseased condition of brain produced by the action of a drug; it may be but a mild form of disease, but it is truly a disease nevertheless. The active principle which produces this result is the crystalline alkaloid, the _theine_,[18] a compound belonging to the same class as strychnine and a number of similar vegetable poisons. These, when diluted, act medicinally—that is, produce disturbance of normal functions as the tea does, and, like theine, most of them act specially on the nervous system; when concentrated they are dreadful poisons, very small doses causing death. The volatile oil, of which tea contains about 1 per cent., probably contributes to this effect. Johnston attributes the headaches and giddiness to which tea-tasters are subject to this oil, and also ‘the attacks of paralysis to which, after a few years, those who are employed in packing and unpacking chests of tea are found to be liable.’ As both the alkaloid and the oil are volatile, I suspect that they jointly contribute to these disturbances, the narcotic business