The World of Caffeine (62 page)

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.

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 places, 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 conception 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.