At the same time you never
should give tea or coffee to the sick, as a rule, after 5 o'clock in the
afternoon. Sleeplessness in the early night is from excitement generally
and is increased by tea or coffee; sleeplessness which continues to the
early morning is from exhaustion often, and is relieved by tea. The only
English patients I have ever known refuse tea, have been typhus cases,
and the first sign of their getting better was their craving again for
tea. In general, the dry and dirty tongue always prefers tea to coffee,
and will quite decline milk, unless with tea. Coffee is a better
restorative than tea, but a greater impairer of the digestion. Let the
patient's taste decide. You will say that, in cases of great thirst, the
patient's craving decides that it will drink _a great deal_ of tea, and
that you cannot help it. But in these cases be sure that the patient
requires diluents for quite other purposes than quenching the thirst; he
wants a great deal of some drink, not only of tea, and the doctor will
order what he is to have, barley water or lemonade, or soda water and
milk, as the case may be.
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