The Chemistry of Cookery

the individual. A rough, lumbering, insensible navvy may drink a quart or two of tea, or a few gallons of beer, or several quarterns of gin, with but small results of any kind. I know an omnibus-driver who makes seven double journeys daily, and his ‘reglars’ are half a quartern of gin at each terminus—_i.e._ 1¾ pints daily, exclusive of extras. This would render most men helplessly drunk, but he is never drunk, and drives well and safely. Assuming, then, that the experimenter has taken sufficient daily tea to have a sensible effect, he will suffer on leaving it off. Let him persevere in the discontinuance, in spite of brain languor and dull headache. He will find that day by day the languor will diminish, and in the course of time (about a fortnight or three weeks in my case) he will be weaned. He will retain from morning to night the full, free, and steady use of all his faculties; will get through his day’s work without any fluctuation of working ability (provided, of course, no other stimulant is used). Instead of his best faculties being dependent on a drug for their awakening, he will be in the condition of true manhood—_i.e._ able to do his best in any direction of effort, simply in reply to moral demand; able to do whatever is right and advantageous, because his reason shows that it is so. The sense of duty is to such a free man the only stimulus demanded for calling forth his uttermost energies. If he again returns to his habitual tea, he will again be reduced to more or less of dependence upon it. This condition of dependence is a state of disease precisely analogous to that which is induced by opium and other drugs that operate by temporary abnormal cerebral exaltation. The pleasurable sensations enjoyed by the opium-eater or smoker or morphia injector are more intense than those of the tea-drinker, and the reaction proportionally greater. I must not leave this subject without a word or two in reference to a widely prevailing and very mischievous fallacy.