n hope remaining at the bottom." Tissot says, "They are the
prolific sources of hypochondriac melancholy, which both adds strength
to and is one of the worst of disorders." He adds, "with regard to
studious men, who are naturally weak and feeble, such warm beverages
are more hurtful to them than to others; for they are not troubled with
an over thick, but, on the contrary, too thin a blood. You are all
aware," continues he, "respectable auditors, that the density of the
blood is as the motion of the solids; the fibres of the learned are
relaxed, their motions are slow, and their blood, of consequence, thin.
Bleed a ploughman and a doctor at the same time; from the first there
will flow a thick blood, resembling inflammatory blood, almost solid,
and of a deep red; the blood of the latter will be either of a faint
red, or without any colour, soft, gelatinous, and will almost entirely
turn them to water. Your blood, therefore, men of learning, should not
be dissolved, but brought to a consistence; and you should in general
be moderate in the article of drinking, and cautiously avoid warm
spirituous liquors.

"Amongst the favorite beverages of the learned," the same Tissot
observes, "is the infusion of that famous leaf, so well known by the
name of India tea, which, to our great detriment, has every year, for
these two centuries past, been constantly imported from China and
Japan. This most pernicious gift first destroys the strength of the
stomach, and if it be not soon laid aside, equally destroys that of the
viscera, the blood, the nerves, and of the whole body; so that
malignant and all chronical disorders will appear to increase,
especially nervous disorders, in proportion as the use of India tea
becomes common; and you may easily form a judgment, from the diseases
that prevail in every country, whether the inhabitants are lovers of
tea or the contrary. How happy would it be for Europe, if, by unanimous
consent, the importation of this infamous leaf was prohibited, which is
endued only with a corrosive force derived from the acrimony of a gum
with which it is pregnant."

Having thus considered the dismal and too frequently fatal consequences
of the nerves being affected, it is presumed this part of the Essay
cannot be more interestingly concluded than by a summary of the
distinct symptomatic effects attending, more or less, complaints of the
nerves; and although the following symptoms are alarming with regard to
thei