Thus it is with Ovington, in the penultimate year of the seventeenth century, that the notion of caffeine as a stimulant broadens. Previously, the caffeinated beverages had been credited with the power to sustain physical strength, as in the conquistador’s boasted that those who drank chocolate could march for a day without food, and the power to prolong wakefulness, as in the Sufi observation that coffee sustained their nocturnal devotions or the Taoist observation that tea sustained their prolonged meditations. To these stimulating powers Ovington adds the idea that tea can provoke “invention” or “fancy,” or, as we should say, “creativity,” and that it is therefore the natural liquor of the “sons of the Muse.” As to the identity of the “ingenious Persons” who, Ovington says, had personal benefit from tea’s power to stimulate creativity, we can only speculate, save for the certainty that he meant to include Edmund Waller (1606–87), whose poem, “Of Tea, commended by Her Majesty,” addressed to Catherine of Braganza (1638–1705), he presents in full. This poem praises tea as “the Muse’s friend,” which “does our Fancy aid.” This idea is well envisioned in Ruffio’s painting Coffee Comes to the Aid of the Muse.
Although Ovington, like others before him, commends the ability of tea to forestall sleep and induce wakefulness, he regards this ability not so much as a result of the stimulation of the body, but as a consequence of tea’s power to fire the imagination by “animating the Faculties”:
So that a few Cups of this excellent Liquor will soon rowze the cloudy Vapors that be night the Brain, and drive away all Mists from the Eyes. ’Tis a kind of another Phoebus to the Soul, both for inspiring and inlightening it; and in spight of all the Darkness of the Night, and all the Heaviness of the Mind, ’twill brighten and animate the Thoughts, and expel those Mists of Humors that dull and darken Meditation.34
His concluding cautionary remarks are surprisingly moderate and modern:
And yet after all, though these rare and excellent Qualities have long been observable in Tea, yet must we not imagine that they always meet with the same Effect indifferently in all Persons, or that they universally prevail. For either the Height of a Distemper, or the long Continuance of it; either the Constitution of the Person, or some certain occult Indisposition may avert the Efficacy, and obstruct or delay the desir’d Success. It may either be drunk without Advice, or at unseasonable Times; either the Water, or the Tea, may be bad; and if the Physick itself be sickly, we cannot easily expect much Health by it.35
Mixed Notices for Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate
From the middle of the seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth century, a variety of extreme opinions about the three temperance beverages competed in England. Most English physicians, who, unlike their French counterparts of the time, were respected in their native land, advanced the view that coffee and tea had indispensable medicinal value.36 We get a quick look into the medical opinions of both countries about tea, coffee, and chocolate from A Compleat History of DRUGGS, a compendious French materia medica, translated into English in 1712:
Of Tea
The Tea is so much in vogue with the Eastern People, that there are very few who do not drink it; and the French some Years ago had it in universal Esteem; but since Coffee and Chocolate have been introduced into that Country, there is nothing near the quantity used as before…
…The Leaf is more used for Pleasure in the Liquor we call Tea, than for any medicinal Purpose; but it has a great many good Qualities, for it lightens and refreshes the Spirits, suppresses Vapours, prevents and drives away Drowsiness, strengthens the Brain and Heart, hastens Digestion, provokes Urine, cleanses or purifies the Blood, and is proper against the Scurvy....
We have six kinds of Tea used in England.... The Bohea, however is esteemed softening and nourishing, and good in all inward Decays; the Green is diuretick, and carries an agreeable Roughness with it into the Stomach, which gently astringes the Fibres, and gives them such a Tensity as is necessary for a good Digestion: Improper or excessive Use may make this, or any thing else that has any Virtues at all, do Mischief; but there are very few Instances of that; and with Moderation it certainly is one of the best, pleasantest, and safest Herbs ever introduced into Food or Medicine, and in the frequent Use of which, People generally enjoy a confirm’d Health: the Green, indeed, if drank too freely, is prejudicial to such as have weak Lungs; such People, therefore, ought to drink the Bohea with Milk in it.37
Coffee Comes to the Aid of the Muse, a drawing from a painting by Ruffio. This drawing reminds us of the line from Waller, “Tea, the Muse’s friend,” and the expressions of many famous artists and scientists to the effect that the caffeinated beverages were important if not indispensable to their creative exertions. (W.H.Ukers, All about Coffee)
Of Coffee
Caffe, Coffe, Coffi, Buna, Bon, Ban, or Elkaire…Coffee is used for little or nothing I know of, but to make a Liquor with Water and Sugar, which is more or less esteem’d, by different Nations....
It is an excellent drying Quality, comforts the Brain and dries up Crudities in the Stomach: Some Author says, it cures Consumptions, Rickets, and Swooning Fits; it helps Digestion, eases Pains of the Head, rarefies the Blood, supresses Vapours, gives Life and Gaiety to the Spirits, hinders Sleepiness after Vituals, provokes Urine and the Courses, and contracts the Bowels; it is an excellent Dryer, fit for most Bodies, and most Constitutions, but that of young Girls, subject to the Green-Sickness; and likewise is prevalent in such as are apt to have running Humours, sores, or King’s Evil upon them: It prevents Abortion, and confirms the Tone of the parts drunk after eating; but with this Observation, that this Liquor be always made fresh; for if it stands but two or three Hours, it will be pall’d and grow naught.38
Of the Cacao, or Chocolate-Nut
This Fruit is cooling, as may easily be discern’d by their cold nitrous Taste. They open Obstructions, restore in deep Consumptions, stimulate to venery causing Procreation and Conception, facilitate Delivery, preserve Health, help Digestion, make People inclinable to feed, ease Coughs of the Lungs, Gripings of the Bowels, and Fluxes thereof, cause a sweet Breath, and assist in a Difficulty of making Urine. The chief Use of them is in Chocolate, which is so well known there needs no longer discourse about it.39
Thomas Gage (1597–1656), an English missionary, traveler, and travel writer, who lived for a while in South America and wrote a book about the West Indies (referenced in chapter 3), recommends that his European readers take chocolate cold for health reasons, writing that this is the way the Indians do and “thus certainly it doth no hurt.” Gage believed that something about living in America weakened the stomach, stating that “stomachs are more apt to faint than here.” His account of his own consumption of chocolate has an addict’s characteristically insistent enthusiasm:
For myself I must say, I used it twelve years constantly, drinking one cup in the morning, another yet before dinner, between nine or ten of the clock; another within an hour or two after dinner, and another between four and five in the afternoon; and when I was proposed to set up late to study, I would take another cup about seven or eight at night, which would keep me waking till about midnight. And if by chance I did neglect any of these accustomed houres, I presently found my stomach fainty. And with this custome, I lived twelve years in those parts healthy, without any obstructions, or oppilations, not knowing what either ague or fever was.40
We note that he specifies two among what today are recognized as the major effects of caffeine usage: forestalling sleep and a physical dependence that can cause an upset stomach if a dose is skipped.
Other observations about of tea’s pharmacological effects are found in an anonymous slim volume, published in London in 1722, Essay on the Nature, Use, and Abuse of Tea: In a letter to a lady: with an account of its mechanical operation. The author states that tea is to be regarded primarily as a drug, one that has medicinal value when prescribed properly by a physician. The book compares tea’s destructive effects with opium’s and w
arns:
Among many other Novelties in our Diet, there is one which seems particularly to be the Cause of the Hypochondriack Disorders [pains and discomforts beneath the breast bone and melancholy]; and is generally known by the Name of Thea or Tea. It is a Drug, which has of late Years very much insinuated itself, as well into our Diet, as Regales and Entertainments, tho’ its Operation is not less destructive to the Animal Oeconomy, than Opium, or some other Drugs, which we have at present learn’d to avoid with more Caution. That this Drug is useful in Physick, is what I can by no means deny: But as a Medicine, makes it very hurtful as a Diet. And it may be said of all Bodies whatever, which are useful as Medicines, that they are Poisons as a Diet.41
It is reported in Hawesworth’s Voyages that Commodore John Byron (1723–86), a British admiral, found cacao growing abundantly on King George’s Island in the South Seas. Henry Phillips, in The Companion for the Orchard: An Historical and Botan-ical Account of Fruits Known in Great Britain (1831), reports that Byron’s claims for cacao’s pharmacological benefits were expansive:42
The oil of the cacao-nut is the hottest of any known, and is used to recover cold, weak, and paralytic limbs. The Mexicans are said to eat the nuts raw, to assuage pains in the bowels.43
Medical Debates: The Mid-Eighteenth through the End of the Nineteenth Century
With the emergence of modern medical theory and practice in the eighteenth century, two-thousand-year-old humoral theory, having already suffered punishing blows by Vesalius and Harvey in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, came to a lingering and belated end. During this transitional period there appeared a parade of curious, now mostly outmoded ideas about what caffeine does, and how it does what it does, in the human body.
Dr. Simon André Tissot
Fifty years after the death of Cornelius Buntekuh and fifty years before Runge discovered caffeine, elements of humoral theory were still prominent in European medicine. Dr. Simon André Tissot (1728–97), a Swiss-French physician and medical writer, writing at a time by which coffee had come into general use even in Germany, accepted coffee’s place in the materia medica but expressed serious objections to its widespread consumption as part of an everyday diet. In his book Von der Gesundheit der Geleharten, or The Health of Scholars (Leipzig, 1769), Tissot argued that Buntekuh, in promoting coffee and tea, had “corrupted the whole of northern Europe.”44 He asserted that accelerating the circulation of the blood, as coffee would admittedly do, had no value in curing illness and, in fact, will do positive harm:
It is a foolish belief of many sick persons that their ailments are due to an excessive thickness of the blood. Owing to this fallacy, they drink the harmful beverage coffee. The coffee-pots and tea-pots that I find upon their tables remind me of Pandora’s box, out of which all evils came…
The repeated stimulation of the fibers of the stomach weakens them in the end; … the nerves are stimulated, and become unduly sensitive; the energies are dissipated.45
In this passage Tissot expresses his views about the consequences of coffee’s “desiccative” effects. Both coffee’s defenders and detractors agreed that the beverage had an important relationship to the humoral fluid, phlegm, or mucus, which it dried up, whether to good or bad effect, depending on the interpretation of the writer. It was to this effect that Benjamin Moseley, an English physician and medical writer, referred when he wrote, “coffee, which through its warmth and effectiveness, thins the mucous moistures, and improves the circulation of the blood.”46 It was likewise of these desiccative effects that Denis Diderot (1713–1784), in his Encyclopédie, was speaking when he praised coffee’s effect on “heavy-bodied, stout, and strongly phlegm-congested persons,” while advising that it proved deleterious to the “thin and bilious.”47 In a chastening response to those who affected to find coffee indispensable, Tissot pointed out that the great ancient writers, from Homer onward, wrote their great books without its benefit.
Benjamin Moseley, M.D., for the Defense
Benjamin Moseley, M.D. (1742–1819), in A Treatise Concerning the Properties and Effects of Coffee (London, 1785), presents a comprehensive study of what was known about the origins and health effects of coffee in his time, including a particularly interesting critique of prior medical writers such as Simon Pauli. Moseley sees himself as going beyond mere anecdote and basing his conclusions on observation and analysis. Like Thucydides, he did not have a similarly high opinion of the methods of his predecessors:
Among the furious enemies…of Coffee was SIMON PAULLI of Rostock, afterwards physician to the King of Denmark… PAULLI founded his prejudice against coffee, as he had his prejudices against Tea, Chocolate, and Sugar— not on experience, but on anecdotes, that had been picked up by hasty travellers, which had no other foundation than absurd report and conjecture…its supposed effects, on Sultan MAHOMET CASNIN, a King of Persia; who it is said, from an excessive fondness of Coffee, had sotted away the vigour of his constitution. But chemistry and experience have brought the subject into light, and Paulli’s baseless fabric has vanished.
Moseley continues by lampooning the arbitrary and contradictory humoral classifications into which coffee’s effects had been traditionally assigned by various medical writers, demonstrating the shift away from the ancient order in medicine that was starting to occur:
Many have been the dogmas concerning Coffee: some Authors allege that it is dry, and therefore good for the gross and phlegmatic, but hurtful to lean people; some contend that it is cold, and therefore good for sanguine, bilious, and hot constitutions; others that it is hot, and therefore bad for the sanguine and bilious, but good for cold constitutions. Some assure us that it acts only as a sedative; others that it acts only as a stimulant.48
Moseley offers one of the last efforts to present a scientific analysis of coffee’s active constituents before the discovery of caffeine by Runge less than thirty-five years later. “The chemical analysis of Coffee, evinces that it posses a great portion of mildly bitter and light astringent gummois and resinous extract; a considerable quantity of oil; a fixed salt; and a volatile salt. —These are its medicinal constituent principles.” Although his chemical analysis is fanciful, Moseley rightly recognized 3 the importance of good roasting technique, freshness, and proper storage for preparing a desirable beverage:
The roasting of the berry to the proper degree, requires great nicety.... If it is underdone, its virtues will not be imparted; and in use, it will load and oppress the stomach:—If it is over-done, it will yield a flat, burnt, and bitter taste; its virtues will be destroyed; and in use, it will heat the body, and act as an astringent.
The closer it is confined at the time of roasting, and till used, the better will its volatile pungency, flavour, and [medicinal] virtues be preserved.49
Moseley continues the tradition of exaggeration that had already become well established among both proponents and opponents of the caffeinated beverages, attributing a remarkable variety of medicinal benefits to coffee. However, in his judgment, the uses of coffee as a medicine fall into two broad categories. The first is alleviating “disorders of the head,” including headaches, of which he says, “There are but few people who are not informed of its utility.” The second includes its actions as a stimulant and cleansing agent or purgative, its “detergent properties…used in all obstructions of the viscera; it assists the secretions; powerfully promotes the menses, and mitigates the pains attendant on the sparing discharge of that evacuation.” These opinions, obviously reflecting experience with some of caffeine’s physiological effects, are exposited at length in his book.
Expressing a theory that has been confirmed in the twentieth century, Moseley spells out some of the therapeutic benefits of the caffeine in coffee for respiratory problems, a benefit which had been known, apparently, at least as early as the first decade of the eighteenth century:50
A dish of strong Coffee without milk or sugar, taken frequently in the paroxysm of an asthma, abates the fit; and I have often kn
own it to remove the fit entirely. Sir JOHN FLOYER [(1639–1734), physician and medical writer], who had been afflicted with the asthma from the seventeenth year of his age until he was upwards of fourscore, found no remedy in all his elaborate researches, until the latter part of his life, when he obtained it by Coffee.
In Moseley’s time, opium, that “inestimable medicine,” which had the ability to “relieve corporal pain by tranquility, and mental affliction by sleep…and whose excellence no human praise can reach,” was among the most powerful agents in the pharmacopoeia, and its active constituent agents and derivatives, such as morphine and heroin, remain among the most powerful drugs available today. Sovereign against pain, opium, especially when taken to excess, had a variety of side effects that limited its safety. In Moseley’s opinion, among coffee’s valuable qualities was its unique ability to counteract or reduce opium’s detrimental side effects; they are, he writes, “only remediable by Coffee.” Moseley thought that coffee was the specific antidote to opium’s hypnotic effects that had been sought after in vain from “the time of King MITHRADATES down to the days of Doctor JONES.” He also believed that the “heaviness, giddiness, sickness, and nervous affections, which attack the patient in the morning, who has taken an opiate at night, are agreeably removed by a cup or two of strong Coffee.” In his extensive discussion of this ability, it is evident that Moseley is referring to pharmacological actions that we today ascribe to caffeine:
The World of Caffeine Page 18