Note 194 — PART SECOND. (continued 4)
Reading edition
This author relates the following curious anecdote concerning tea-drinking: “We had a gentleman in Switzerland, who in every respect knew how to assume the tone of majesty. He was told one day that nothing elevated the dignity of a king so much as when every thing around him had a pale look. This intimation was sufficient for him. He directed all his servants to be blooded once a month, and obliged each of them to swallow fifty dishes of tea every day.” Tea is said to produce a cadaverous hue in the person who drinks it after bloodletting.