Foods for the fat : a treatise on corpulency, with dietary for its cure / by Nathaniel Edward Davies.

Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Foods for the fat : a treatise on corpulency, with dietary for its cure / by Nathaniel Edward Davies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    tea-leaves are ground to powder, and, after infusion in a tea- cup, the mixture is beaten up until it becomes frothy, and then the whole is swallowed. The Chinese drink their tea in a pure state ; the Russians take it with lemon-juice; and the Germans often flavour it with rum, cinnamon, or vanilla. In England we know it is customary to add cream, milk, or sugar, but for corpulent people the Russian mode would be the best. 102. The only way by which ordinary people can detect adulteration of tea is by unfolding the leaf after it has been used. In pure tea this is serrated (like the edge of a saw) almost its whole length, and the veins run out from the tendrils nearly to the border and then turn in, so that a dis- tinction is left between them and the border. The leaf may vary in shape and size. The leaves used to adulterate tea are the sloe, hawthorn, beech, and willow. Tea-leaves, when freshly gathered, are destitute of odour and flavour. The pleasant taste and aroma for which they are so highly valued are developed in the process of drying. 103. Either black or green tea may be prepared at will from the same leaves, gathered at the same time and under the same circumstances. It is the lengthened exposure to the air in the process of drying, accompanied by a slight heating and fermen- tation, that give the dark colour and the distinguishing flavour to the black teas of the shops. The practice of scenting teas for the English markets is common in China, and many teas, especially green teas, are artificially coloured with Prussian blue, indigo, and burnt gypsum. It is said that one day an English gentleman at Shanghai, being in conversation with some Chinese from the green-tea country, asked them what reason they had for dyeing the tea, and whether it would not be better without undergoing that process. They acknow- ledged that tea was much better when prepared without having such ingredients mixed with it, and that they never drank dyed teas themselves; but that, as foreigners seemed to prefer having poisonous ingredients mixed with their tea to make it look pretty, and as these poisons were cheap, the