I am informed likewise by a physician, of long and extensive practice
in the city, that he has known several instances of a spitting of
blood having been brought on, by breathing in an air loaded with the
fine dust of Tea. It is customary for those who deal largely in this
article to mix different kinds together, so as to suit the different
palates of their customers. This is generally performed in the back
part of their shops, several chests perhaps being mixed together at
the same time. Those who are much employed in this work are at length
very often sufferers by it; some are seized with sudden bleedings
from the lungs or from the nostrils; and others attacked with violent
coughs, ending in consumptions.
These circumstances are chiefly brought in sight to prove, that,
besides a sedative relaxing power, there exists in Tea an active
penetrating substance, which, in many constitutions, cannot fail of
being productive of singular effects.
An eminent Tea-broker, after having examined in one day upwards of
one hundred chests of Tea, only by smelling at them forcibly, in
order to distinguish their respective qualities, was the next seized
with a violent giddiness, head ache, universal spasms, and loss of
speech and memory. By proper assistance, the symptoms abated, but
he did not totally recover. For, though his speech returned, and
his memory in some degree, yet he continued, with unequal steps,
gradually losing strength, till a partial paralysis ensued, then a
more general one, and at length he died. Whether this was owing to
the effluvia of the Tea, may perhaps be doubted. Future accidents may
possibly confirm _the suspicions_ to be just or otherwise.