Page:Essay on the mineral waters of Carlsbad (1835).pdf/93

 chalybeate waters, that incompatibility has been, without any examination, extended to ours. Submitted to exact calculation, I find that six goblets of water contain the $55$/$1000$th part of one grain of oxydule of iron, that is to say almost a nullity. Let us suppose that a patient drinks twelve or even eighteen goblets, what influence can such a quantity of iron have upon two or three cups of tea, taken an hour after the waters, and still less, when taken in the evening?

Innumerable visitors, coming from countries where tea is as common a beverage (England, Russia, Poland, Holland) as coffee in Germany and France, many would find it excessively hard, as they did formerly at Carlsbad, to give up their habitual mode of breakfasting. The fact is that tea does not excite the blood-vessels, as much as coffee; that it acts more directly on the nervous system, and keeps awake those who are not accustomed to it, or who take it immoderately strong; that such effects are never felt by people who drink it daily; that those who never drank it, should not begin at Carlsbad; but that those who are accustomed to that beverage, have no reason to discontinue it during the cure; and that black tea is far preferable to the more acerb and astringent green sorts.

Concerning breakfast, we are daily asked whether butter can agree with the internal use of the waters. Being exquisite in our valley, I never found