This is an interesting bit of information from Professor B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols. It’s from their book titled The Household Guide, or Domestic Cyclopedia. Were it not for the use of the word “dyspepsia,” it could almost have been written for today. And “votaries.” No one uses that word anymore. Oh, heck, this advice is really old and I’m not going to give up my coffee and chocolate for anything! You can’t make me!
1902: Tea and Coffee. Why Do We Drink It?
That fragrant cup of tea, the still more alluring cup of coffee, or the delicious and enticing cocoa or chocolate ~ what is it makes them each and all so indispensible to their votaries?
One says, ‘I drink tea because it is so refreshing, it rests me when I am tired.’ ‘I take coffee for the reason that I can’t do without,’ another honestly confesses; and ‘I drink chocolate because it is so soothing,’ explains a third.
Not Essential to Health. ~ These beverages, physiologists declare, are in no sense to be considered as food or as essential to health. They partake of the nature and effects of alchohol, that is, they are stimulating, exhilarating, sometimes sedative, but never nourishing, and they are taken for a similar reason that the whisky drinker takes the still more stimulating liquor. All are unnatural props and false supports seeming to afford strength and in reality giving none.
Disease Producing. ~ One of the most causes of dyspepsia and nervousness is the immoderate use of tea and coffee. These drinks contain a poison which, although not fatal in small doses, nevertheless produces a decidedly injurious effect. While chocolate and cocoa are less powerful, they produce the same effects.
The tea and coffee drinkers say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t hurt me. I’ve taken it for years.’ But the end is not yet, and when the reckoning is suddenly summed up, there is a painful and fatal deficit, and when it is too late to change the habits of a lifetime, the sad fact becomes apparent that these indulgences in strong tea and coffee are not conducive to the best reults.
Water the Best Drink. ~ Many have found a cure for dyspepsia, nervousness, sick headache and other diseases in discarding tea, coffee, and all their substitutes. After all has been said that can be said in favor of these drinks it remains true that nature’s drink, pure water, is best.
Source: Jefferis, Prof. B. G. The Household Guide, or Domestic Cyclopedia. Atlanta, Ga.: J. L. Nichols & Co., 1902.
~ p. 45 ~