Tea and Coffee | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 4, 1877

Tea and Coffee.

WHY THEIR USE IS UNHEALTHFUL.

(Concluded.)

GENERAL SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE AGAINST TEA AND COFFEE.

1. Their employment as beverages is a useless habit.

2. They are poisonous. Every pound of tea contains one-fourth of a pound of a poison called tannic acid. It contains, in addition, from half an ounce to an ounce of a poison that is fatal in any but very small doses, a few grains causing speedy death.

3. They are medicines. All medicines are poisons, according to medical authority, and are always productive of disease. When coffee was first introduced, it was first of all sold by a tobacco merchant as a “panacea for all diseases.”

4. They produce many painful, chronic, and sometimes incurable, diseases.

Here are a few of the diseases resulting from the use of tea, coffee, chocolate, and similar beverages. Nervousness, sleeplessness, hypochondriasis, sick headache, insanity, tremens, convulsions, paralysis, insensibility, torpidity and congestion of the liver, vertigo, palpitation of the heart, tawny and torpid skin, consumption and other lung diseases, all sorts of nervous diseases, decay of the teeth, loss of sense of taste, constipation, diarrhea, hemorrhoids, dyspepsia, general muscular and nervous debility, epilepsy, cancer, and defective circulation.

5. The use of these articles encourages gossip and scandal by exciting the mind to an unnatural degree, and so leading to unguarded and thoughtless assertions and remarks.

6. They are among the chief causes of intemperance, for they foster and encourage the desire for stimulation, which always increases with gratification.

7. A large proportion of all the tea and coffee is dangerously poisoned by adulteration with numerous injurious articles. Prussic acid is common in tea, and Venetian red and other coloring matters in coffee!

8. Especially injurious is the influence of tea and coffee upon children. When the habit of using these articles is not contracted until adult age, their baneful influence is soon and painfully apparent. But when children are allowed to indulge it, its injurious influence is increased many fold. The physical development is dwarfed. The mind is stunted and stupefied. Healthful beauty and youthful freshness and elasticity are obliterated; and if the poor victim survives adolescence, it is only as a mental and physical dwarf, a chronic dyspeptic, a nervous, irritable, suffering invalid.

HOW TO STOP DRINKING TEA AND COFFEE.

Shall the habit be discontinued at once, or shall a gradual change be made? This question is certainly worthy of serious attention, as it is much discussed. It would seem to be self-evident that when a person finds himself indulging a habit which saps his vitality, undermines his constitution, shatters his nerves, and exposes him to the influence of every malady to which humanity is subject, the best thing he can do is to abandon so dangerous a practice as quickly as possible. A person who is not completely saturated with tea or coffee, or who has not entirely shattered his nervous organism by their use, can abandon them at once, and with little difficulty except the strong cravings of appetite and taste.

Even the most inveterate user of either tea or coffee can cease its use at once without any fears of shortening his life by so doing, although he may feel as though death would certainly result. All his bad feelings are simply evidences of the injury which the tea and coffee have already done, and not of the necessity for their use, or of any injury resulting from abstaining from them. But when so sudden a change is made, the individual should make an exclusive business of the matter. Lay aside all cares and responsibilities. Do not attempt to pursue your usual avocations, at least let only a very small proportion of the ordinary amount of work be done. Avoid anything taxing or unpleasant. Secure rest and quiet. If the head aches severely, and the nerves seem to be all unstrung, apply hot cloths to the head for a few minutes, take a tepid bath, and go to bed. A few days of persevering effort will end the struggle and give you the victory.

A less satisfactory plan is to gradually decrease the strength of the beverage and the frequency of its use until it can be relinquished unnoticed.