The Chemistry of Cookery

(the archæologist), was a victim of this terrible folly. He undertook the translation of the ‘Life of Julius Cæsar,’ by Napoleon III., and to do it in a cruelly short time. He fulfilled his contract by sitting up several nights successively by the aid of strong tea or coffee (I forget which). I saw him shortly afterwards. In a few weeks he had aged alarmingly, had become quite bald; his brain gave way and never recovered. There was but little difference between his age and mine, and but for this dreadful cerebral strain, rendered possible only by the stimulant (for otherwise he would have fallen to sleep over his work, and thereby saved his life), he might still be amusing and instructing thousands of readers by fresh volumes of popularised archæological research. I need scarcely add that all I have said above applies to coffee as to tea, though not so seriously _in this country_. The active alkaloid is the same in both, but tea contains weight for weight above twice as much as coffee. In this country we commonly use about 50 per cent. more coffee than tea to each given measure of water. On the Continent they use about double our quantity (this is the true secret of ‘Coffee as in France’), and thus produce as potent an infusion as our tea. I need scarcely add that the above remarks are exclusively applied to the _habitual_ use of these stimulants. As medicines, used occasionally and judiciously, they are invaluable, provided always that they are not used as ordinary beverages. In Italy, Greece, and some parts of the East, it is customary, when anybody feels ill with indefinite symptoms, to send to the druggist for a dose of tea. From what I have seen of its action on non-tea-drinkers, it appears to be specially potent in arresting the premonitory symptoms of fever, the fever headache, &c. Since the publication of the above in ‘Knowledge,’ I have been reminded of the high authorities who have defended the use of the alkaloids, and more particularly of Liebig’s theory, or the theory