DRUNKENNESS FROM TEA

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 31, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 13.

DRUNKENNESS FROM TEA.

DR. SLAYTER, in a late number of the Lancet, writes of a case of delirium in a girl who chewed large quantities of tea. It appeared that masses of tea leaves had lodged in the bowels, and the delirium was in some measure dependent on the irritation and reflex action which followed. Trembling delirium, and delusions of injury from others, gave it a strong resemblance to delirium tremens. The amount of tea chewed daily was over one pound. The patient recovered by the use of free cathartics and the withdrawal of the tea.

In 1881 I saw a boy who had delirium and trembling that had existed at intervals for two months. The fact that his father had died an inebriate seemed to be a sufficient reason for his symptoms in the minds of his friends. It was ascertained that he had for years drunk large quantities of tea. Having been employed in a tea-store, he had chewed it freely. He was literally a tea inebriate. He had inherited an inebriate diathesis, and the early and excessive use of tea was a symptom of it. He had all the symptoms of one who was using alcohol to excess. He recovered, and a year later used coffee to great excess, until he became unfit for work; then he was under medical care for a time, recovered, and finally became an opium-taker.

Another case came under my observation in the person of a little girl twelve years old, the daughter of a patient under my care for inebriety. She had gradually and steadily become excessively nervous. She could not sleep; had muscular twitchings and delusions of fear; would burst into tears, and complain that she was going to be turned out into the streets. She heard voices at night and could not keep still. She also imagined that her father was being burned. It was finally found that she was a tea inebriate, and both drank and chewed it at all times without any restraint.

A physician consulted me about a singular stage of trembling and mild delusions which had appeared in a family of three old maids living alone. It was found to come from excessive use of tea, and to be tea inebriety. When this was stopped, they recovered. My observation leads me to think that these cases are not uncommon among the neurotics. They are of such a mild character at first as to escape special observation, and hence are supposed to be due to other causes. Such cases, after beginning on tea, take other drugs, and become alcohol, opium, or chloral-takers, or develop some form of neurosis which covers the real and first causes.—Journal of Inebriety.