We acknowledge an amiable
weakness for those bounties of Nature which soothe or comfort us or
renew our nervous energy, and which, we think, injure us no more than
our daily bread, if not immoderately used.
Science almost always finds some foundation in fact for popular
prejudices. For years, men have continued wasting their substance on
coffee and tea, insisting that they strengthened as well as comforted
them, in spite of the warnings of the sanitarian, who looked on them
solely as stimulants or sedatives, and of the economist, who bewailed
their extravagant cost.
Physiology, relying on organic chemistry, has at least justified by
experiment the choice of the civilized world. Coffee and tea had been
regarded by the physiologist and the physician as stimulants of the
nervous system, and to a less extent and secondarily of the
circulation, and that was all. To fulfil this object, and to answer the
endless craving for habitual excitants of the cerebral functions, they
had been admitted reluctantly to the diet of their patients, rather as
necessary evils than as positive goods. It was reserved for the
all-searching German mind to discover their better qualities; and it is
only within the last five years, that the self-sacrificing experiments
of Dr.
Pages:
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119