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 | Coffee was found and brought back to Europe from Arabia and Turkey; it had spread to these and other Near Eastern and North African regions from Ethiopia. |
| Tea was brought back from China. |
| The kola nut was found in common use in West Africa, and was later introduced into cola drinks as a source of caffeine. |
| The cocoa tree was found in Mexico, the West Indies, and much of Central and South America. Chocolate from this tree was the favorite beverage of the Emperor Montezuma; it was said that 50 pitchersful a day were prepared for his use. This drink was soon popular throughout the world. |
| The ilex plant, source of the caffeine drink known as mate or Paraguayan tea, was found in Brazil and elsewhere in the American tropics; this tea is still drunk in the United States as yerba mats, and in parts of South America it rivals coffee and tea in popularity. |
| Cassina-also known as yaupon, as the Christmas berry tree, and as the North American tea plant-was found in common use as the source of a caffeine beverage among Indians from Virginia to Florida and west along the Gulf coast to the Rio Grande. It was reported at the time that "none [of] the Indians but their great Men and Captains, who have been famous for their great Exploits of War and Noble Actions, are admitted to the use of this noble Bevaridge." 2 White settlers in these regions prepared a tea known as the "Black Drink," "Black Drought," or dahoon, from the same plant; they also let the leaves ferment to produce a drink containing both alcohol and caffeine. |
During the Civil War, when the South was under blockade so that supplies of coffee and tea were cut off, cassina again became a popular beverage in the Confederacy. During and after World War 1, when coffee prices soared, Congress and the United States Department of Agriculture launched projects to popularize cassina as a substitute source of caffeine; cassina-flavored ice cream and cassina soft drinks as well as cassina teas were marketed .3
The introduction of caffeine drinks into countries that had not previously known them-like the introduction of other exotic drugs such as nicotine and marijuana-aroused a sense of deep moral outrage and evoked efforts to repress the new drug. The Mohammedans of Arabia, for example, first used the newly introduced coffee to help them stay awake during prolonged religious vigils. This "use as a devotional antisoporific stirred up fierce opposition on the part of the strictly orthodox and conservative section of the priests. Coffee by them was held to be an intoxicating beverage, and therefore prohibited by the Koran, and severe penalties were threatened to those addicted to its use ." 4 An early Arabian writer summed up: "The sale of coffee has been forbidden. The vessels used for this beverage . . . have been broken to pieces. The dealers in coffee have received the bastinado, and have undergone other ill-treatment without even a plausible excuse; they were punished by loss of their money. The husks of the plant ... have been more than once devoted to the flames, and in several instances persons making use of it . . . have been severely handled." 5 "Notwithstanding threats of divine retribution and other devices," however, "the coffee-drinking habit spread among the Arabian Mohammedans, and the growth of coffee and its use as a national beverage became as inseparably connected with Arabia as tea is with China." 11
Dr. Robert S. de Ropp notes that when coffee was introduced into Egypt in the sixteenth century, "the 'coffee bugaboo' . . . caused almost as much fuss as the 'marijuana bugaboo' in [the] contemporary United States. Sale of coffee was prohibited; wherever stocks of coffee were found they were burned.... All this fuss only bad the result of interesting more people in the brew and its use spread rapidly." -,
In Europe, too, coffee became a popular drink despite (or perhaps because of) efforts at repression and medical warnings.
Medical opposition to coffee continued into the twentieth century. A typical medical attack can be found in Morphinism and Narcomanias from Other Drugs (1902) by T. D. Crothers, M.D., superintendent of the Walnut Lodge Hospital in Connecticut, editor of the Journal of Inebriety, and professor of nervous and mental diseases at the New York School of Clinical Medicine. Dr. Crothers classed coffee addiction with morphinism and alcoholism. "In some extreme cases delusional states of a grandiose character appear; rarely violent or destructive, but usually of a reckless, unthinking variety. Associated with these are suspicions of wrong and injustice from others; also extravagant credulity and skepticism." 8 One case of coffee psychosis he cited concerned "a prominent general in a noted battle in the Civil War; after drinking several cups of coffee he appeared on the front of the line, exposing himself with great recklessness, shouting and waving his hat as if in a delirium, giving orders and swearing in the most extraordinary manner. He was supposed to be intoxicated. Afterward it was found that he had used nothing but coffee." 9 Another of Dr. Crothers's charges against coffee resembles an accusation currently levied against marijuana: "Often coffee drinkers, finding the drug to be unpleasant, turn to other narcotics, of which opium and alcohol are most common." 10
A similar view of the evils of caffeine drinks can be found in A System of Aledicine (1909), edited by Sir T. Clifford Allbutt, K.C.B., M.A., M.D., LL.D., D. Se., F.R.C.P., F.R.S., F.L.S., F.S.A., Regius Professor of Physic (Internal Medicine) in the University of Cambridge, England, and by Humphrey Davy Rolleston, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P. The chapter on "Opium Poisoning and Other Intoxications" in this textbook, used in American as well as British medical schools, was by Sir Clifford and Dr. Walter Ernest Dixon, professor of materia medica and pharmacology, King's College, London-one of the foremost pharmacologists of his generation.
We have seen several well-marked cases of coffee excess ... [Sir Clifford and Dr. Dixon reported]. The sufferer is tremulous, and loses his self-command; he is subject to fits of agitation and depression; he loses color and has a haggard appearance. The appetite falls off, and symptoms of gastric catarrh may be manifested. The heart also suffers; it palpitates, or it intermits. As with other such agents, a renewed dose of the poison gives temporary relief, but at the cost of future misery.11
Tea, Sir Clifford and Dr. Dixon found, is in some respects even worse; it produces 11 a strange and extreme degree of physical depression.... A grievous sinking may seize upon a sufferer.... The speech may become vague and weak. By miseries such as these, the best years of life may be Spoilt."' 13
* Sir Clifford's and Dr. Dixon's views on coffee and tea may be contrasted with their statement that "opium is used, rightly or wrongly, in many oriental countries, not as an idle or vicious indulgence, but as a reasonable aid in the work of life. A patient of one of us took a grain [60 milligrams] of opium in a pill every morning and every evening for the last fifteen years of a long, laborious, and distinguished career. A man of real force of character, concerned in affairs of weight and of national importance, and of stainless character, he persisted in this habit, as being one which gave him no conscious gratification or diversion, but which toned and strengthened him for his deliberations and engagements." 12
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