TEA AND COFFEE AND INTEMPERANCE.
By John Harvey Kellogg
THE use of tea and coffee is one of the chief causes of intemperance. It has been urged in favor of the use of these beverages that they prevent intemperance by furnishing a means of mild stimulation. It is indeed amazing what loose logic, what fallacious reasoning, men will employ on subjects in which the gratification of their perverted appetites and tastes is involved. What would be thought of a ruler who should abolish all laws relative to petty larceny so that thieves and robbers would have an opportunity to gratify their propensity for crime without resorting to burglary and highway robbery? Does not everyone know that it is by degrees that the bank robber is made,139and that little abstractions, petty thefts, are the stepping-stones to the criminal eminence of the highwayman? Just so it is in the present case. Tea and coffee, with mild stimulation, are at one end of the drunkard's course, while rum, gin, and brandy, with delirium tremens, are at the other end. The great crime of drunkenness is not in the act of drinking the fiery draught; it is in the gratification of the desire for artificial stimulation. The sin is the same in kind, whatever may be the agent employed, although it may differ in degree as the individual indulges in tea, coffee, tobacco, alcohol, hasheesh, or opium. At first, the mild stimulation of coffee or tea is satisfactory. After a little time this is found insufficient, even when made as strong as practicable, to excite to the desired degree the exhausted nerves. Something stronger is called for, and tobacco and alcohol gradually obtain a foothold where once they would have been spurned with disgust.—Dr. J. H. Kellogg.