From Legend to Science: the Health Benefits of Tea Throughout the world, tea and coffee rival each other as mankind's most popular brewed beverages. For thousands of years, however, tea has had one great advantage over coffee: it is believed to have a wide range of medicinal properties. In his book, Tea in China, John C. Evans states that ˇ§if tea had not possessed a medical reputation, the beverage we know today might never have existed.ˇ¨ (Evans 19) Research in fact proves that tea owes its reputation as much to its health benefits as to its taste, and this has been true, since tea made its first appearance in ancient China more than two thousa