4. Grunes and Magida, Chocolate Classics, p. 3.
5. Morton and Morton, Chocolate, p. 15.
6. Coe and Coe, True History, p. 156.
7. Henry Phillips, The Companion for the Orchard, p. 67.
8. OED, “cacao,” quoting Blundevil, Exerc. V. Ed. 7, p. 568.
9. Jill Norman, Coffee, pp. 10–11.
10. Quoted in Ukers, All about Coffee, p. 53.
11. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise, p. 92.
12. Norman, Coffee, pp. 11–12.
13. Ibid., p. 14.
CHAPTER 5
the caffeine trade supplants the spice trade
1. Quoted in Ukers, All about Tea, vol. I, p. 24. This account is found in Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, London, 1625.
2. Quoted in Ukers, All about Coffee, p. 31. Linschoten’s book may have been the source for a common European belief that tea tenderizes meat, which became prevalent over a century later.
3. Nicol, A Treatise on Coffee, p. 121. Also see Jacob, Epic of a Commodity, p. 43
4. Denys Forrest, Tea for the British, pp. 19–21.
5. Vieussens, the first physician to perform chemical examination of the blood, the only Parisian follower of Sylvius, the great Dutch champion of Harvey and caffeine, also suffered condemnation by the Paris Faculty.
6. Ukers, All about Tea, vol. I, p. 33.
7. Ibid., vol. II, p. 487.
8. Ibid., vol. I, p. 72.
9. Jacob, Epic of a Commodity, p. 43.
10. Jardin Edelestan, Le Caféier et le Café, p. 16.
11. Ukers, All about Coffee, p. 87, who also mentions an admittedly unconfirmed account that, under the reign of Louis XIII, coffee was sold by a Levantine in the Petit Chatelet, as cohove or cahoue.
12. Disraeli explains, “It appears…that Thévenot, in 1658, gave coffee after dinner; but it was considered as the whim of a traveller; neither the thing itself, nor its appearance, was inviting: It was probably attributed by the gay to the humour of a vain, philosophical traveller. But ten years afterwards, a Turkish ambassador at Paris made the beverage highly fashionable. The elegance of the equipage recommended to the eye, and charmed the women: the brilliant porcelain cups in which it was poured; the napkins fringed with gold, and the Turkish slaves on their knees presenting it to the ladies, seated on the ground on cushions, turned the heads of the Parisian dames” (Isaac Disraeli, Curiosities of Literature, vol. II, p. 321).
13. In 1692, Damame Francois, a Parisian merchant, became the man to see about caffeine after receiving a royal patent to sell coffee and tea in France, which was to be exclusive throughout the nation for ten years.
14. He continues, “Members of good society in Paris did not then visit houses of public entertainment.” Jacobs, Epic of a Commodity, p. 83.
15. Quoted in Ukers, All about Coffee, p. 95.
16. Quoted in Jacobs, Epic of a Commodity, p. 136.
17. Alfred Franklin, “Le café, le the, et le chocolat,” in Arts et métiers de Parisiens du XII au XVIII siecle, Paris, 1893.
18. In 1664, because of the astonishing arrival of four thousand French troops, when Louis XIV had sent in support of his fellow Christians despite his treaty with Mohammed IV, the Turks withdrew from Vienna’s walls. Although the Turks had suffered defeat in battle, the terms of their retreat, according to which they assumed control of Hungary, were extremely favorable. What Suleiman Aga learned in Paris served to deter any further reliance on the Sun King. In 1683, the Turkish Janissaries were joined at the walls of Vienna by no French troops, whose arrival, had it suited Louis’s whim to have sent them, would most certainly have reversed the defeat generally acknowledged to have marked the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Louis XIV continued his remarkable flipflopping, in 1684 signing a treaty with Leopold I of Austria and in 1688 sending troops against him just as he had done against the Turks.
19. Heise, Coffee and Coffee-Houses, p. 16.
20. Harold B. Segel, The Vienna Coffeehouse Wits: 1890–1938, pp. 8–9, citing Karl Teply, Die Einfuhrung des Kaffees in Wien: Georg Franz Kolschitzky, Johannes Diodato, Isaak de Luca (Vienna, Kommissionsverlag Jugend und Volk Wien-Munchen, 1980).
21. Heise, Coffee and Coffee-Houses, pp. 103–5
22. Manfred Hamm, Coffee Houses of Europe, p. 9.
23. Harry Rolnick, The Complete Book of Coffee, p. 142.
24. Quoted in Ukers, All about Tea, vol. I, pp. 31–32.
25. Casper David Friedrich, Briefen und Bekenntnissen, ed. Sigrid Hinz, Berlin, 1974, p. 35.
CHAPTER 6
the late adopters
1. Heise, Coffee and Coffee-Houses, p. 58, quoting Aton Schindler, Biographic von Ludwig van Beethoven, Leipzig, 1970, p. 436.
2. Germany has a well-deserved reputation for lagging behind in the European cultural, intellectual, artistic, and social movements that, eventually, are adopted by her as surely as they already have been by the rest of Europe, and she made no exception in her tardiness in taking up caffeine. Gilbert Highet in his brilliant tome The Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1949) theorized that the power of Luther’s faith forestalled the development of reasoned natural istic inquiry in Germany. In consequence, Germany never experienced what in other European nations was called the Renaissance, or at least did not do so until long after the others, so that in that country the Renaissance overlapped the Romantic period. Goethe, for example, is only properly understood as both a Renaissance and a Romantic figure.
3. Jacob, Epic of a Commodity, p. 55.
4. Ibid., p. 61.
5. Ibid., p. 60.
6. Quoted in Ukers, All about Coffee, p. 41.
7. Heise, Coffee and Coffee-Houses, p. 9, quoting Adam Olearius, Vermehrte newe Beschreibung der Muscowitisch und Persischen Reyse (Schleswig, 1656).
8. Ibid., p. 15.
9. Ibid., p. 17, quoting Journal, number 25, 1686, Frankfurt.
10. Quoted in Ukers, All about Coffee, p. 42.
11. Quoted in Jacob, Epic of a Commodity, p. 151.
12. Ibid., p. 150.
13. Schivelbusch, Paradise, p. 92.
14. Hamm, Coffee Houses of Europe, pp. 131–32.
15. Quoted in Morton, Chocolate, p. 67. The war against beer was still being waged. Goethe was a partisan of the temperance beverages. He wrote to Karl Ludwig von Knebel (1744–1844), a poet, translator, philologist, and tutor to the princes at the Weimar court, “If our people continue swilling beer and smoking as they now do for another three generations, woe to Germany! The effect will first become noticeable in the stupidity and poverty of our literature, at which our descendants will declare themselves greatly astonished!” (Adapted from quotation in Jacob, Coffee: The Epic of a Commodity, p. 59.)
16. Ukers, All about Tea, vol. I, p. 31.
17. Ibid., p. 32.
18. Chow and Kramer, All the Tea in China, p. 16.
19. Ukers, All about Tea, vol. II, p. 96.
CHAPTER 7
judgement of history
1. Even chocolate was first offered for sale in North America by a Boston pharmacist in 1712, and its trade remained in the hands of apothecaries for many years. Norman, Coffee, p. 14.
2. In fact, inebriation is a function of blood-alcohol levels that can be reduced only by metabolization of alcohol by the liver. Drinking coffee cannot make you less drunk; it can only make you more wide awake, while you remain as drunk as before.
3. Norman, Coffee, p. 22.
4. Ibid., p. 23.
5. Quoted in Schivelbusch, Paradise, p. 23.
6. Ibid., p. 35.
7. Ukers, All about Coffee, p. 21, quoting Reis’ in die Morgenländer (Rauwolf’s Travels in the Orient), published at Frankfort and Lauingen in 1582–83. Another translation of parts of the same passage reads:
Among others there is an excellent drink which they greatly esteem. They call it “Chauve.” It is almost as black as ink, and is a valuable remedy in disorders of the stomach. The custom is to drink it early in the morning, in public pla
ces, quite openly, out of earthenware or porcelain cups. They do not drink much at a time, and, having drunk, walk up and down for a little, before sitting down together in a circle. The beverage is made by adding to boiling water the fruit which they call “bunnu,” which in size and color resembles laurel berries, the kernel being hidden away between two thin lobes of fruit… The use of the drink is so general that there are many houses which make a practice of supplying it ready prepared; and also, in the bazaars, merchants who sell the fruit are plentiful. (Jacob, Epic of a Commodity, p. 42)
It is interesting that Rauwolf mentions both the Arabic word for the beverage as well as the Ethiopian name for the fruit, if we assume, with him, that bunnu is a variant of bunc.
8. Quoted in Ukers, All about Coffee, p. 8.
9. Simon Pauli, Commentarius de Abusu Tabaci et Herbae Thee, etc., pp. 166–67.
10. Ibid., pp. 112–13.
11. He asserts that betony “cures no les that forty-seven Disorders… The Asiatic Tea is therefore far inferior to the European Betony” “He has as many virtues as betony” is still a common proverb in Spain. It was commonly supposed that, like the caffeinated beverages, betony could also induce intoxication, and, when dried and powdered as snuff, immoderate sneezing.
Turner in his British Physician (1687) wrote of betony:
It would seem a miracle to tell what experience I had of it. This herb is hot and dry, almost to the second degree, a plant of Jupiter in Aries, and is appropriated to the head and eyes, for the infirmities where of it is excellent, as also for the breast and lungs; being boiled in milk, and drunk, it takes away pains in the head and eyes. Some write it will cure those that are possessed with devils, or frantic, being stamped and applied to the forehead. (Quoted in Pamela Todd, Forget-Me-Not, p. 157.)
12. Quoted in Ukers, All about Tea, vol. I, p. 30, Commentarius de Abusu Tabaci et Herbae Thee, Rostock, Germany, 1635.
13. Pauli, Commentarius, pp. 169–70
14. Quoted in Ukers, All about Tea, vol. I, pp. 31–32. This physician is immortalized in Rembrandt’s painting Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.
15. Garrison, History of Medicine, p. 262.
16. Ukers, All about Tea, vol. I, p. 32, citing Buntekuh, Tractat van het Excellente Cruyt Thee, The Hague, 1679.
17. Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Louis XIV, p. 412.
18. Descartes’ mechanistic model of the universe, one of the most celebrated ideas of the day, was, to its scientifically minded proponents, well exemplified on a small scale by Harvey’s biometric demonstration of the circulation of the blood.
19. Ukers, All about Coffee, p. 28, quoting Jean La Roque, Voyage de L’Arabie Heureuse, Paris, 1716.
20. Ibid., p. 28.
21. Quoted in Jacob, Epic of a Commodity, pp. 71–72.
22. The need for this book is demonstrated by another title that came out the same year in Lyon, The Most Excellent Virtues of the Mulberry, Called Coffee.
23. Nicol, Treatise on Coffee, pp. 21–22.
24. Octave Guelliot, Treatise Du Caféisme Chronique, p. 33.
25. Daniel Duncan, Wholesome Advise against the Abuse of Hot Liquors, p. 1.
26. Ibid., p. 5.
27. Ibid., pp. 11–12.
28. The truly revolutionary aspect of Harvey’s discovery was not, however, the observation that the blood circulated. It was his demonstration of this fact by using quantitative or mathematical measures. Garrison, History of Medicine, p. 247.
29. Sherwin Nuland, Doctors: The Biography of Medicine, p. 126.
30. Heise, Coffee and Coffee-Houses, pp. 15–16.
31. Harvey apparently picked up one other cultural influence from his Islamic schoolmates. As Aubrey tells us: “He would say that we Europeans knew not how to order or governe our Woemen, and that the Turks were the only people used them wisely. I remember he kept a pretty young wench to wayte on him, which I guesse he made use of for warmeth-sake as King David did, and tooke care of here in his Will, as also of his man servant.” Aubrey, Brief Ltves, p. 131.
32. Quoted in John Ovington, Essays upon the Nature and Qualities of Tea, pp. 31–32.
33. Ibid., pp. 20–22.
34. Ibid., p. 31.
35. Ibid., pp. 38–39. Frederick Slare (1647–1727), an English physician and chemist, was one of those rare unfortunates, like the twentieth-century researcher Hayreh, with whom coffee violently disagreed. Moseley asserts that Slare’s problems with coffee were only the result of his excessive consumption, a point with which Slare might not have entirely disagreed:
Nor do I decry and condemn Coffee, though it proved very prejudicial to my own health, and brought paralytic affections upon me. I confess, in my younger days, I ignorantly used it in too great excess; as many daily do make use of this, and other Indian drinks; though I have quite abandoned it for above thirty years, and soon recovered the good tone of my nerves, which continue steady to this day; yet I must own, Coffee to some people is of good use, when taken “in just proportion, &c.” It is true that they (Indian drinks) do not agree with all constitutions, with some, only one of these entertaining liquids, as Green Tea; and with others, all of them disagree. (Quoted in Moseley, Effects of Coffee, footnote, pp. 59–60.)
36. Unfortunately coffeehouses themselves had become waiting and examination rooms for quack practitioners.
37. Pierre Pomet, Lemery, and Tournefort, A Compleat History of DRUGGS, pp. 87–89.
38. Ibid., p. 130.
39. Ibid., p. 131.
40. Walter Baker and Company, Chocolate Plant, p. 12, quoting Thomas Gage, New Survey of the West Indies (1648).
41. Anonymous, Essay on the Nature, Use, and Abuse of Tea: In a letter to a lady: with an account of its mechanical operation, pp. 14– 15.
42. Phillips, Orchard, p. 68.
43. “The Spanish ladies make use of the oil drawn from the cacao-nut, as a good cosmetic to soften and smooth the skin, as it does not render it greasy or shiny, being a quicker drier and without smell” (Ibid.). Most people might assume that the cosmetic benefits of cacao oil, such as they might be, have nothing to do with caffeine, but certain recent studies suggest that caffeine may be effective as a topical treatment of atopic dermatitis, so perhaps the Spanish ladies knew something that it has taken medical science two hundred years to discover.
44. Quoted in Jacob, Epic of a Commodity, p. 73.
45. Ibid., p. 74.
46. Quoted in Schivelbusch, Paradise, p. 48.
47. Ibid., p. 48.
48. Moseley, Effects of Coffee, pp. 53–54.
49. Ibid., pp. 27–29.
50. The most obvious beneficial effects of caffeine are clearly being designated, however unwit tingly, in the following passage:
Long watching and intense study are wonderfully supported by it, and without the ill consequences that succeed the suspension of rest and sleep, when the nervous influence has nothing to sustain it.
We are told that travellers in Eastern Countries and Messengers who are sent with dispatches, perform their tedious journeys by the alternate effects of Opium and Coffee;—and that the dervies and religious zealots, in their abstemious devotions, support their vigils, through their nocturnal ceremonies, by this exhilarating liquor. (Ibid.)
51. Ibid., pp. 41–47.
52. Ibid., pp. 68–69.
53. Martin Gardener, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, pp. 187–90.
54. Schivelbusch, Paradise, p. 43.
55. Samuel Hahnemann, Der Kaffee in seinen Wirkungen, Leipzig, 1803, quoted in Schivelbusch, ibid.
56. John Cole, Esq., “On the Deleterious Effects Produced by Drinking Tea and Coffee in Excessive Quantities,” Lancet 2 (1833): 274– 78.
57. OED, “Caffeine.”
58. Cole, Deleterious Effects, p. 278. Notice the use of the diasthenic notion of disease and the mechanism by which caffeine produces illness in the organism. In 1905, Starling coined the term hormone, from the Greek “hormon,” or “impelling,” and originated the concep
tion of hormones as chemical messengers, carried by the bloodstream to sites where they control bodily processes. In consequence of Starling’s idea, dynamic metabolic theories progressively supplanted earlier diasthentic theories of pathology, which had referred illness to permanent structural or constitutional predispositions or tendencies of the body, either hereditary or acquired, that rendered it liable to certain special diseases.
59. Honoré de Balzac, Traité des Excitants Modernes, unpublished translation by Robert Onopa.
60. Arnaud Baschet, Honoré de Balzac: Essai sur l’Homme et sur l’Oeuvre, Paris: Giraud et Dagneau, 1852; Geneva: Slatkin, 1973. Quoted in Graham Robb, Balzac: A Biography, p. 401.
CHAPTER 8
postscript
1. We know that, in the context of religious devotions, the Buddhists of China and the Sufis of Arabia had each relied on their own caffeinated beverage to help them conform to the discipline of prayer and meditation. Perhaps Europe encountered the need for a corresponding discipline in a civil context, with the advent of machines and the industrial age.
In the fifteenth century people still usually judged the time by the height of the sun or the positions of the stars. But as the seventeenth century wore on, the entire continent ran increasingly by the clock, and caffeine is the indispensable analeptic that allowed men to live by the clock, to knit their working lives together and engage each other as cogs engage in a machine.
2. The Egyptians used sundials and clepsydrae, or water clocks, from about 1500 B.C., and the same rude instruments, or refinements of them, were relied on by every subsequent civilization until the invention of the accurate mechanical clock. This invention occurred in the eighth century in China and in a different form and not until the sixteenth century in Europe.
The hours themselves varied in length by design in the ancient world. Their hour was not of the astronomical day, as it is for us, but of the actual time from sundown to sunrise. The length of the ancient hour changed with the season, equally between ¾ and of a modern hour. Among the Greeks, the sun during the day and the stars during the night were used to estimate these hours. Thus time, in the millennia before the invention of accurate mechanical clocks, was reckoned by rough estimates, so that “The length of a man’s shadow indicated the progress of the day.”
The World of Caffeine Page 52