A letter to the members of the Temperance Society showing that the use of tea and coffee cannot be safely substituted for that of spirituous liquors : and proposing for their adoption a rule of diet from which those substances are excluded / by James Henry.

  • Henry, James, 1798-1876.
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the members of the Temperance Society showing that the use of tea and coffee cannot be safely substituted for that of spirituous liquors : and proposing for their adoption a rule of diet from which those substances are excluded / by James Henry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    36/66 (page 32)
    its quantity so gradually increased, that the constitution becomes accustomed to the poison, and in some measure accommodated to it. Thus it is that although the constitution is deeply, perhaps even vitally injured, yet such injury being produced gradually and not by the first dose of the poison, is either not perceived at all, or is attributed to some other cause, or is regarded as the operation of nature. If it happen besides that the poi- sonous substance is in very general use, its effects are traced with still greater difficulty, as they have not the advantage of contrast to render them conspicuous. Thus have I explained how tea which is known in France to be a powerful medicine, can be used in this country with little apparent injury as an article of diet, and how opium (12) may be in universal use as a luxury in the East, although known by us to be one of the most energetic of medicinal agents. The conclusion which appears necessarily to follow from the cases above detailed, is abundantly confirmed by the testimony of the greater number of medical writers; by the general practice of physicians who in- terdict the use of tea and coffee to nervous, anxious, and hypochondriac patients; by the experience of those patients themselves •