Tea and Coffee | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 30, 1877

Tea and Coffee.

WHY THEIR USE IS UNHEALTHFUL.

PHYSICAL EFFECTS—CONCLUDED.

Let us trace this work of destruction and desolation in the vital domain a little more minutely.

1. The savory beverage containing the poison is taken into the mouth hot. The great heat injures the teeth by so suddenly increasing their temperature, and thus induces early decay. It also works almost irreparable mischief with the delicate nerve of taste. Then it washes down the food, thus preventing proper mastication and the admixture of the saliva with the food, by this means creating two very serious impediments to digestion. By preventing sufficient mastication, the teeth are deprived of the requisite amount of exercise to maintain their healthy integrity, and decay soon begins, just as an unused arm withers.

2. The scalding potion passes down into the stomach, and there begins its work of mischief. At first it irritates and excites the delicate tissues of this organ by the excessive heat. This excitement is soon replaced by as great a debility and relaxation. It also renders the gastric juice inefficient by diluting it, and still further exhausts the stomach by rendering necessary the energetic action of its thousands of absorbents to remove the great mass of fluid which is interfering with the work of digestion which is to be performed.

3. Being thus received into the circulation, by the last process, the infusion of tea or coffee with its contained poison is hurried off to the liver, the kidneys, the lungs, the mucous membrane of the intestines, and, finally, to the skin. Each of these willing servants of the body sets energetically to work in its own way to get the intruder out as quickly as possible. But while so doing, the ordinary work of the body is necessarily neglected to a greater or less extent. The gross, acrid, irritating, biliary matters which the liver should remove are left to accumulate in the blood. The kidneys find it impossible to perform all the work laid upon them, and they fail to remove as much of the products of decomposition as is necessary to keep the blood pure. The mucous membrane also neglects its ordinary work to some extent; and, in trying to wash out the unwelcome and destructive theine, it pours out from the blood a large amount of its watery portion, thus still further thickening the already turbid current. The lungs are also doing extra work, while the skin, like the mucous membrane, is draining the blood of its fluid to purge it from the narcotic poison which it bears. Now, mark the result of all this morbid activity and disarrangement of the vital functions. The liver gets behind in its work, becomes congested, and finally torpid, inactive. The kidneys are overworked, and are liable to take on almost any form of disease to which they are subject. Diarrhea or obstinate constipation affects the bowels. The lungs lose their accustomed activity and gradually decrease in efficiency. The skin becomes clogged with the carbonaceous and biliary matters which abound in the blood, and which it finds itself unable to eliminate.

This beautiful and flexible covering of the human body assumes a yellow, sickly, unwholesome appearance, and becomes of a leathery texture, so well known to physicians as the tea complexion, and which is one of the chief sources of revenue to the venders of patent lotions, “balms,” and cosmetics.

But while all these devastations have been in progress, it must not be forgotten that the most delicate and sensitive tissues of the body, the nerves, have not been allowed to escape, but have suffered even more severely than the less delicately organized depurating organs. As soon as the tea or coffee was taken into the stomach, it was recognized by the nerves of that organ as a poison. These faithful sentinels immediately communicated this fact to one of the great nervous centers, whence the intelligence was generally distributed throughout the body, rousing every part of the nervous system, which in turn excited the various depurating or excreting organs to a great increase of action. This nervous irritation or excitement is followed by its inevitable consequence, depression. And, as the process is frequently repeated, the nerves become shattered, weakened, and uncertain in their action. Then come sick headache, nervousness, and every form of nervous disease.

Furthermore, the blood being filled with gross, irritating impurities, every tissue of the body is bathed in a poisoned life-current, and is consequently contaminated, diseased. The blood is also impoverished, as well as poisoned; for the stomach has suffered with the rest, and has lost its power to properly digest the food, and suitably prepare it for assimilation.

The physical condition of the body becomes that of universal disease. Such is the pernicious influence of tea and coffee upon the physical frame.

(To be continued.)