es, the farmers and the housewives, of the former
generation; and they that pass ten hours in bed, and eight at cards, and
the greater part of the other six at the table, are taught to impute to
tea all the diseases which a life, unnatural in all its parts, may
chance to bring upon them.

Tea, among the greater part of those who use it most, is drunk in no
great quantity. As it neither exhilarates the heart, nor stimulates the
palate, it is commonly an entertainment merely nominal, a pretence for
assembling to prattle, for interrupting business, or diversifying
idleness. They, who drink one cup, and, who drink twenty, are equally
punctual in preparing or partaking it; and, indeed, there are few but
discover, by their indifference about it, that they are brought together
not by the tea, but the tea-table. Three cups make the common quantity,
so slightly impregnated, that, perhaps, they might be tinged with the
Athenian cicuta, and produce less effects than these letters charge upon
tea.

Our author proceeds to show yet other bad qualities of this hated leaf.

"Green tea, when made strong, even by infusion, is an emetick; nay, I am
told, it is used as such in China; a decoction of it certainly performs
this operation; yet, by long use, it is drunk by many without such an
effect. The infusion also, when it is made strong, and stands long to
draw the grosser particles, will convulse the bowels: even in the manner
commonly used, it has this effect on some constitutions, as I have
already remarked to you from my own experience.

"You see I confess my weakness without reserve; but those who are very
fond of tea, if their digestion is weak, and they find themselves
disordered, they generally ascribe it to any cause, except the true one.
I am aware that the effect, just mentioned, is imputed to the hot water;
let it be so, and my argument is still good: but who pretends to say, it
is not partly owing to particular kinds of tea? perhaps, such as partake
of copperas, which, there is cause to apprehend, is sometimes the case:
if we judge from the manner in which it is said to be cured, together
with its ordinary effects, there is some foundation for this opinion.
Put a drop of strong tea, either green or bohea, but chiefly the former,
on the blade of a knife, though it is not corrosive, in the same manner
as vitriol, yet there appears to be a corrosive quality in it, very
different from that of fruit, which stains the knife."