The World of Caffeine

by Weinberg, Bennett Alan, Bealer, Bonnie K.

  Chemical intoxicants have been widely enjoyed since the remotest prehistoric times. We know that the production and consumption of alcohol from fermented plant matter are universal practices and have either arisen independently or been adopted into every place where human beings have lived. Yet the use of caffeine began to assert itself only within historical times, emerging as a relatively localized practice, first documented as coffee drinking in the Yemen, or as tea drinking in China and Japan, before suddenly exploding over the entire surface of the globe within the last few hundred years. Most cultivars, such as wheat, have been raised as long as they have been known, generally long before the time of written records. Yet the caffeinated plants, which are by far the largest cash crops on earth today, were still unknown within historical times, even in the regions in which they are today often mistakenly imagined to have originated.

  Whether, like coffee, which was brought by Gabriel as a medicinal gift for Solomon or Mohammed, like tea, which was discovered by Shen Nung or carried by the missionary Bodhidharma, or, like chocolate, which was brought by Quetzalcoatl from heaven for the enjoyment of his people, the great caffeine-bearing plants were described as gifts from the gods in the earliest cultures into which they are known to have been introduced. The religious of many faiths have been repeatedly associated with the early uses of caffeine and the cultivation and propagation of the plants in which it occurs, as illustrated in examples such as the Sufis with coffee, the Buddhist monks with tea, the Aztec god-king with chocolate, and the Jesuits with all three and maté as well.

  The seeds or leaves of the caffeine-bearing plants have been recurringly used as money, as cacao beans were by the Maya and Aztecs, cassine leaves by the North American Indians, cola nuts by the Africans, coffee beans by the Arabs, and bricks of tea by the Chinese and the Russians, a use that places them in the very small class of negotiable substances such as gold, silver, and precious jewels.

  Today, more than any time before, caffeine is the dominant, nearly universal drug of the human race. It was in the steaming cups of coffee or tea that sat alongside the men who created the first newspapers. It is in the steaming cups of coffee or . tea or, nearly as often, in the cold colas or other carbonated soft drinks that sit by those who design and use the Internet software and websites that are taking us into the third millennium.

  Other drugs have had their days, for the use of many intoxicants is cyclic, rising and falling over the decades and centuries. Certainly caffeine use has not remained constant, nor can it be absolutely asserted that its use has demonstrated an unbroken increase in every nation in every decade. Yet, during the five centuries since word of the caffeinated beverages reached Europe, the coffee bean alone has come to account for a greater share of international trade than any other agricultural commodity, and these beverages have reached every quarter of every country on the earth. We can be fairly certain that this ubiety is unlikely to be compromised in the new millennium. Indeed, if our observations about the attractions of caffeine as a benign intoxicant and conversational stimulant and its uses to help us conform to our schedules, increase our physical and mental endurance, even spark our creative imaginations are correct, then this strange crystal, which may have evolved as a natural insecticide, has a shining future in the centuries ahead.

  Selling the caffeinated beverages is and is likely to remain a great business. The cost of the imported green beans in a cup of coffee, sold retail at between seventyfive cents and five dollars, depending on where you buy it, is about seven cents. The cost of the roasted, ground coffee in a cup is less than twenty cents.3 Few people, however, are ever likely to shun the café because of the big markup in price.

  Is caffeine safe? The answers given in part 5—“Nobody knows” or “It depends”— are still the most accurate. As of this writing, caffeine appears to be remarkably nontoxic and to have been associated with few, if any, large-scale health problems. Unfortunately, in proportion to the extent of our exposure to caffeine, too little is yet known about its health effects for smugness. For example, questions have recently arisen again about whether caffeine increases the risk for developing high blood pressure. And there is no question that more work must be done to determine its effects on the fetus, in light of the fact that more than 75 percent of infants are born with detectable amounts of caffeine in their blood.

  Caffeine has played a part in medicine, religion, painting, poetry, learning, love, life, and death. It figures prominently in the accords and enmities and the exchanges of trade and intelligence that constitute the history and intercourse of nations; and it is also a vitalizing and nearly indispensable agent in the singular lives of the overwhelming majority of the world’s six billion people. Caffeine propels both idleness and industry. In the coffeehouse, it feeds idleness, whether it is the productive idleness of talk of politics, art, or social engagement, or the useless or even inimical idleness of gaming and gossip; in the workplace, it fuels the mental and physical stimulation that make possible long hours, punctuality, alertness, and alacrity; and in the studio, it stirs the artist’s imagination and creative energies. And it does these things with little or no harm to the prudent user. Of no other drug, nor any other agency known to man, can we say the same.

  apppendix a

  The London Coffeehouse during the Commonwealth and Restoration

  This broadside, distributed by Pasqua Rosée, proprietor of London’s first coffeehouse, was the first printed advertisement for coffee in England. After informing the reader that coffee hails from the “deserts of Arabia,” Rosée recommends that half a pint of the water in which the ground beans had been boiled should be downed on an empty stomach, a manner of consumption intended to maximize the bewilderingly wide range of pharmacological benefits specified in the remainder of the text. It is interesting to note that coffee is presented as a drug only and no notice is taken of its possible enjoyment as a comestible. Note especially the reference to its humoral properties, “cold and dry,” and how it readies a person for work and interferes with sleep:

  THE VERTUE OF THE COFFEE DRINK

  First made and publickly sold in England by Pasqua Rosee.

  The grain or berry called coffee, groweth upon little trees only in the deserts of Arabia. It is brought from thence, and drunk generally throughout all the Grand Seignour’s dominions. It is a simple, innocent thing, composed into a drink by being dried in an oven, and ground to powder, and boiled up with spring water, and about half a pint of it to be drunk fasting an hour before, and not eating an hour after, and to be taken as hot as possibly can be endured; the which will never fetch the skin oft the mouth, or raise any blisters by reason of that heat.

  The Turks’ drink at meals and other times is usually water, and their diet consists much of fruit; the crudities whereof are very much corrected by this drink.

  The quality of this drink is cold and dry; and though it be a drier, yet it neither heats nor inflames more than hot posset. It so incloseth the orifice of the stomach, and fortifies the heat within, that it is very good to help digestion; and therefore of great use to be taken about three or four o’clock afternoon, as well as in the morning. It much quickens the spirits, and makes the heart lightsome; it is good against sore eyes, and the better if you hold your head over it and take in the steam that way. It suppresseth fumes exceedingly, and therefore is good against the head-ache, and will very much stop any defluxion of rheums that distil from the head upon the stomach, and so prevent and help consumptions and the cough of the lungs.

  It is excellent to prevent and cure the dropsy, gout, and scurvy. It is known by experience to be better than any other drying drink for people in years, or children that have any running humours upon them, as the king’s evil, & tc. It is a most excellent remedy against the spleen, hypochondriac winds, and the like. It will prevent drowsiness, and make one fit for business, if one have occasion to watch, and therefore you are not to drink of it after supper, unless you intend to be watchful, for it will hinder s
leep for three or four hours.

  It is observed that in Turkey, where this is generally drunk, that they are not troubled with the stone, gout, dropsy, or scurvy, and that their skins are exceeding clear and white. It is neither laxative nor restringent.

  Made and sold in St. Michael’s-alley, in Cornhill,

  by Pasqua Rosee, at the sign of his own head.

  During the Commonwealth and throughout the Restoration, coffeehouses were an ebullient forum for a heterogeneous assembly, including rich and poor, aristocrats and merchants, academics and the unlettered. To introduce restraints that might prevent disharmony and disorder and encourage conviviality, proprietors printed the following bill of regulations on large sheets, which they posted conspicuously on coffeehouse walls. The list, which encompasses rules of governing foul language, blasphemy, breaches of etiquette, gambling, paying for your fare, and treating others to a “dish” of the beverage that brought such a mixed group together, gives us a vivid picture of life in the coffeehouses in their first decades in England. It is addressed to men only, since women were barred from the English coffeehouses of the day:

  Enter, Sirs, freely, but first, if you please, Peruse our civil orders, which are these.

  First, gentry, tradesmen, all are welcome hither,

  And may without affront sit down together:

  Pre-eminence of place none here should mind,

  But take the next fit seat that he can find:

  Nor need any, if finer persons come,

  Rise up for to assign to them his room;

  To limit men’s expense, we think not fair,

  But let him forfeit twelve-pence that shall swear[.]

  He that shall any quarrel here begin,

  Shall give each man a dish t’ atone the sin;

  And so shall he, whose compliments extend

  So far to drink in coffee to his friend;

  Let noise of loud disputes be quite forborne,

  Nor maudlin lovers here in corners mourn,

  But all be brisk and talk, but not too much;

  On sacred things, let none presume to touch,

  Nor profane Scripture, nor saucily wrong

  Affairs of state with an irreverent tongue:

  Let mirth be innocent, and each man see

  That all his jests without reflection be;

  To keep the house more quiet and from blame,

  We banish hence cards, dice, and every game;

  Nor can allow of wagers, that exceed

  Five shillings, which ofttimes do troubles breed;

  Let all that’s lost or forfeited be spent

  In such good liquor as the house doth vent.

  And customers endeavour, to their powers,

  For to observe still, seasonable hours.

  Lastly, let each man what he calls for pay,

  And so you’re welcome to come every day.

  The “Triumphs of London, 1675,” by Thomas Jordan (1612–85), English poet and pamphleteer, was a poem celebrating the marvels of coffeehouse society, particularly as the center of news, rumors, controversies, and the exchange of information. The lines “So great an university,/I think there n’er was any;/In which you may a scholar be,/For spending of a penny” were the origin of the famous coffeehouse epithet, “penny university.”

  Triumphs of London, 1675

  You that delight in wit and mirth, And love to hear such news That come from all parts of the earth, Turks, Dutch, and Danes, and Jews: I’ll send ye to the rendezvous, Where it is smoaking new; Go hear it at a coffee-house, It cannot but be true. There battails and sea-fights are fought, And bloudy plots displaid; They know more things than e’er was thought, Or ever was bewray’d: No money in the minting-house Is half so bright and new; And coming from the Coffee-House, It cannot but be true. Before the navies fell to work, They knew who should be winner; They there can tell ye what the Turk Last Sunday had to dinner. Who last did cut Du Ruiter’s corns, Amongst his jovial crew; Or who first gave the devil horns, Which cannot but be true. A fisherman did boldly tell, And strongly did avouch, He caught a shole of mackerell, They parley’d all in Dutch; And cry’d out, Yaw, yaw, yaw, mine hare, And as the draught theyh drew, They stunk for fear that Monk was there: This sounds as if ’twere true. There’s nothing done in all the world, From monarch to the mouse; But every day or night ’tis hurl’d Into the coffee-house: What Lilly or what Booker cou’d By art not bring about, At Coffee-house you’ll find a brood, Can quickly find it out. They know who shall in times to come, Be either made or undone, From great St. Peter’s-street in Rome, To Turnbal-street in London.

  . . .

  They know all that is good or hurt, To damn ye or to save ye; There is the college and the court, The country, camp, and navy. So great an university, I think there ne’er was any; In which you may a scholar be, For spending of a penny. Here men do talk of everything, With large and liberal lungs, Like woman at a gossiping, With double tire of tongues, They’ll give a broadside presently, ’Soon as you are in view: With stories that you’ll wonder at, Which they will swear are true. You shall know there what fashions are, How periwigs are curl’d; And for a penny you shall hear All novels in the world; Both old and young, and great and small, And rich and poor you’ll see; Therefore let’s to the Coffee all, Come all away with me.

  In June 1667, after Charles II had spent the money allotted by Parliament for the English navy on debauchery, Du Ruiter, a Dutch admiral, took advantage of the vulnerability of the English position, blockading the Medway and Thames and destroying fortifications as far as Chatham and Gravesend. General Monk and Prince Rupert were then commanders of the English fleet. William Lilly (1602–1681), the celebrated English astrologer during the Commonwealth, predicted a victory over Charles I, which was regarded as fulfilled in the battle at Naseby. Jonathan Booker (1603–1667), another English astrologer, was a fishing-tackle maker on Tower Street during the reign of Charles I, before becoming a Cromwell partisan and winning popular acclaim by foretelling “the downfall of King and Popery.” Turnbal, now called Turnbull Street, had been a red-light district since Elizabethan times.

  In his essay “London Coffee Houses in 1685,” Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859), English historian, essayist, and statesman, celebrates the coffeehouses of the Restoration, particularly Will’s, where the patrons converged from all quarters of English society, and where intellectual conversations, such as discussions of Aristotle’s requirement that the tragic drama be limited by the famous unities of place and time, were common fare. Will’s was especially renowned as the favorite haunt of John Dryden, the poet laureate, whose regular chair was moved from its place nearest the fire in winter to the cool air of the balcony in summer:

  Nobody was excluded from these places who laid down his penny at the bar. Yet every rank and profession, and every shade of religious and political opinion had its own headquarters.

  There were houses near St. James’ Park, where fops congregated, their heads and shoulders covered with black or flaxen wigs, not less ample than those which are now worn by the Chancellor and by the Speaker of the House of Commons. The atmosphere was like that of a perfumer’s shop. Tobacco in other form than that of richly scented snuff was held in abomination. If any clown, ignorant of the usages of the house, called for a pipe, the sneers of the whole assembly and the short answers of the waiters soon convinced him that he had better go somewhere else.

  Nor, indeed, would he have far to go. For, in general, the coffee-houses reeked with tobacco like a guard room. Nowhere was the smoking more constant than at Will’s. That celebrated house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk was about poetical justice and the unities of place and time. Under no roof was a greater variety of figures to be seen. There were earls in stars and garters, clergymen in cossacks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from universities, translators and index makers in ragged coats of frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where John Dryden
sate. In winter that chair was always in the warmest nook by the fire; in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to the Laureate, and to hear his opinion of Racine’s last tragedy, or of Bossu’s treatise on epic poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch from his snuff-box was an honor sufficient to turn the head of a young enthusiast.

  There were coffee-houses where the first medical men might be consulted. Dr. John Radcliffe, who, in the year 1685, rose to the largest practice in London, came daily, at the hour when the Exchange was full, from his house in Bow street, then a fashionable part of the capital, to Garraway’s, and was to be found, surrounded by surgeons and apothecaries, at a particular table.

  There were Puritan coffee-houses where no oath was heard, and where lank-haired men discussed election and reprobation through their noses; Jew coffee-houses, where dark-eyed money changers from Venice and Amsterdam greeted each other; and Popish coffee-houses, where, as good Protestants believed, Jesuits planned over their cups another great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot the king.

  appendix b

  Supplementary Tables

  Table 1. Caffeine Content of Foods and Beverages

  Table 2. Caffeine Percentage by Weight: Natural Sources

  Table 3. Caffeine Content of Soft Drinks