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Lesser Writings of Samuel Hahnemann

 

 

 

ON THE EFFECTS OF COFFEE

 

FROM ORIGINAL OBSERVATIONS.

 

(Leipzic, 1803.)

 

In order to enjoy a healthy and long life, man requires foods which contain

nutrious, but no irritating, medicinal, parts, and drinks which are either

merely diluent, or diluent and nutirious at the same time, but which contain no

medicinal and irritating component parts, such as pure spring water and milk.

 

In the way of accessaries to stimulate the taste, the only substances that have

been found to be harmless and suitable for the human body are kitchen salt,

sugar and vinegar, all three in small, or at all events, moderate quantities.

 

All other accessaries, which we term spices, and all spirituous and fermented

liquors, bear a greater or less resemblance to medicines in their nature. The

nearer they resemble medicines, the more frequently and the more copiously they

are taken into our bodies, the more objectionable are they, the more prejudicial

to health and long life.

 

Most objectionable of all is the frequent use of purely medicinal substances of

great power as articles of diet.

 

Among the ancient, wine was the only purely medicinal drink, but the wise Greeks

and Romans at least never drank it without diluting it plentifully with water.

 

In modern times many more purely medicinal drinks and condiments have been added

to our diet: snuffing and smoking tobacco, chewing tobacco and hemp-leaves,

eating opium and agaric, drinking brandy, several kinds of stimulating and

medicinal beers, tea (Chocolate belongs to the nutritious articles, when it is

not too highly spiced: otherwise it is objectionable, or even hurtful.) and

coffee.

 

Medicinal things are substances that do not nourish, but alter the healthy

condition of the body; any alteration, however, in the healthy state of the body

constitutes a kind of abnormal, morbid condition. (In proportion as the

substances we call medicines can make the healthy body sick, so are they

calculated to remove the abnormal states dangerous to life, which go by the name

of diseases. The sole end of medicines consequently is, to change the abnormal,

the morbid state, that is, to transform it into health. Used by themselves, and

when no disease is present, they are absolutely hurtful things for health and

normal life. Their frequent use as articles of diet deranges the harmonious

concordance of our organs, undermines health and shortens life. A wholesome

medicine for a healthy individual is a contradiction of terms.)

 

Coffee is a purely medicinal substance.

 

All medicines have, in strong doses, a noxious action on the sensations of the

healthy individual. No one every smoked tobacco for the first time in his life

without disgust; no healthy person ever drank unsugared black coffee for the

first time in his life with gusto – a hint given by nature to shun the first

occasion for transgressing the laws of health, and not to trample so frivolously

under our feet the warning instinct implanted in us for the preservation of our

life.

 

Bu continuing the use of these medicinal articles of diet (whereto fashion and

example seduce us), habit gradually extinguishes the noxious impressions that

they at first made upon us; they even become agreeable to us, that is to say,

the disagreeable impressions their ingestion at first produced do not strike us

so much as we go on using them, and their apparently agreeable effects upon our

organs of sensation gradually become necessary to us. The ordinary run of

mankind esteems even factitious wants as happiness, and gradually associates

with their satisfaction the idea of relish.

 

Perhaps also, inasmuch as by their use we become to a certain degree sickly, our

instinct tries from time to time at least to alleviate this indisposition

occasioned by the continued us of these medicinal articles of diet, by means of

the palliative relief which they are capable of affording to the malady produced

from time to time by themselves.

 

In order to understand this proposition, we must take into consideration the

fact that all medicines produce in the body conditions the opposite of one

another. Their commencing action (primary action) is the direct opposite of

their secondary action, that is, of the state they leave behind in the body when

their primary action has ceased some hours. (For instance, to-day jalap powder

purges, ad to-morrow and the next day there follows constipation.)

 

Most medicines produce, both in their primary and secondary action, disturbances

in the healthy body and disagreeable sensations and pains, a certain set of

these in their primary action and another opposite set in their secondary

action, and even their prolonged employment excites no agreeable effects in the

healthy individual.

 

Only the few medicinal substances that the refinement of a sensual world has

chosen to introduce among articles of diet, form in some degree, an exception to

this, at least in their primary action. They possess the peculiar property, when

continued to be used in moderation, to create in their primary action of a sort

of artificial exaltation of the ordinary state of heath, an artificial

exaltation of the life and almost only agreeable sensations, whilst the

disagreeable effects their secondary action tends to develop remain for some

time of little importance, as long as the individual is pretty well in health,

and leads in other respects a healthy and natural of life.

 

To this small class of medicines introduced into our dietary belongs coffee,

with its partly agreeable, partly disagreeable effects, both of which, strange

though it may appear, are but little known.

 

Its irregular, unrestricted use in ordinary life, at almost all times of the

day, its employment in such various strength and quantity, its preparation under

the most dissimilar conditions, its general use by persons of the most various

ages and constitutions, of the most different health and habits of life,

deprives the observer of all means of seeing its action aright, deprives the

observer of all means of seeing its action aright, and makes it excessively

difficult to ascertain its true action, and thence to draw pure inferences. So a

disk may be covered with the clearest characters and words, but all will be

unrecognizable if the disk be whirled round with great rapidity; in that case

everything runs together, even to the eyes of the most sharpsighted.

 

It is only by accurate, prolonged, unprejudiced observation, as free as possible

from all source of deception, and by carefully tracing back the phenomena to

their cause, that we can obtain accurate knowledge respecting the most important

of all beverages, coffee.

 

Its primary action is in general a more or less agreeable exaltation of the

vital activity; the animal, the natural, and the vital functions (as they are

called) are artificially exalted by it during the first hours, and the secondary

action that ensues gradually after the lapse of several hours is the opposite –

disagreeable feeling of existence, a lower degree of vitality, a kind of

paralysis of the animal, natural, and vital functions. (“When I awake in the

morning,” writes a genteel, consummate coffee-drinking lady,” I have the power

of thinking, and the activity of an oyster.”

 

When a person unaccustomed to the use of coffee drinks a moderate quantity, to

one accustomed to its use drinks an immoderate (The expressions moderate and

immoderate must only be understood in a relative and individual sense; they

cannot be defined by fixed magnitude and figures of universal acceptation. Thus

a certain prince, H. C. V. C., reared in a luxury, who is now dead, required for

an allowance, every time he drank coffee, an infusion of fourteen ounces of the

roasted bean, whereas we meet with persons who are very strongly affected by a

quarter of an ounce. Each person must fix his own standard according to his

peculiar corporeal system. One can bear more than another. Moreover the whole

series of agreeable symptoms of the primary action of coffee I have here

described does not appear in every one, at all events not all at once, but only

one a time, some in one, others in another, in this one more, in that fewer.)

quantity, for the first hours the self-consciousness, the feeling of his

existence, of his life, becomes more lively. He gets a circumscribed redness of

the cheeks, a redness which does not become gradually lost in the surrounding

parts, but which presents the appearance of a well-defined red spot. The

forehead and palms of the hands become warm and moist, He feels warmer than

before; he feels agreeable, yet uneasily warm. The occurs a kind of voluptuous

palpitation of the heart, somewhat resembling that occurring during great joy.

The veins of the hands swell. Externally also he is warmer to the feel than

natural, but his warmth never comes to the length of heat, even after a large

quantity of coffee (it sooner turns into general perspiration); none ever become

burning hot.

 

Presence of mind, attention, sympathy, become more active than in the healthy

natural state. All external objects appear to excite a feeling of pleasure, they

take on, if I may be allowed the expression, a joyous varnish, and if the

quantity of coffee taken was very great, they assume an almost over-pleasing

lustre. (If the quantity of coffee taken be immoderately great and the body very

excitable and quite unused to coffee, there occurs a semilateral headache, from

the upper part of the parietal bone to the base of the brain. The cerebral

membranes of this side also seem to be painfully sensitive. The hands and feet

become cold; on the brow and palms cold seat appears. The disposition becomes

irritable, and intolerant; no one can do anything to please him. He is anxious

and trembling restless, weeps almost without cause, or smiles almost

involuntarily. After a few hours, sleep comes on, out of which he occasionally

starts up in affright. I have seen this rare state two or three times.) During

the first hours the coffee drinker smiles contented with himself and with all

external objects, and this property it was that mainly tended to make coffee a

social beverage. All the agreeable sensations communicated are speedily

increased to enthusiasm (though only for a short time). All sorts of

disagreeable recollections, or disagreeable natural feelings cease during this

kind of blessed fever.

 

In the healthy natural states of the human being, left to themselves,

disagreeable sensations must alternate with agreeable ones; this is the wise

arrangement of our nature. During the primary action of this medicinal beverage,

however, all is delight, and even those corporeal functions which in the natural

state of health are accompanied by an unpleasant sensation almost bordering on

pain, are now performed with extreme ease, almost with kind of pleasure.

 

In the first moments or quarters of an hour awaking particularly when this takes

place earlier than usual, everyone who in not living completely in a state of

rude nature, has disagreeable feeling of not thoroughly awakened consciousness,

of confusion, of laziness, and want of pliancy in the limbs; it is difficult to

move quickly, reflection is a labour.

 

But, see, coffee removes this natural disagreeable sensation this discomfort of

the mind and body, almost instantaneously; we suddenly become completely alive.

 

After completing our day’s labour we must, in the course of nature, become lazy;

a disagreeable feeling of weight and weariness in our bodily and mental powers

make us ill-humoured and cross, and compels us to give ourselves up to the

requisite rest and sleep.

 

This crossness and laziness, this disagreeable weariness of mind and body on the

approach of natural sleep, rapidly disappears on taking this medicinal beverage,

and a dispersion of sleepiness, a factitious liveliness, a wakefulness in

defiance of nature occurs.

 

In order to live we require food, and see! Nature compels us to seek it and

replace what has been lost, by hunger, or gnawing uncomfortable sensation in the

stomach, a tormenting longing for food, a quarrelsome crossness, chilliness,

exhaustion, & c.

 

Not less uncomfortable is the feeling of thirst, nor is it less a wholesome

provision of nature. Besides the longing desire for liquids which our body needs

for its restoration, we are tormented by a dryness of the throat and mouth, a

dry heat of the whole body, that to a certain extent impedes the respiration, a

restlessness, & c.

 

We drink coffee – and see! We feel but little or nothing more of the painful

sensations of hunger, nor of the anxious, longing sensation of thirst. Genuine

coffee-drinkers, especially those ladies addicted to its use, who are deprived

of the opportunity of recovering from the bad effects of this drink by

occasional exercise in the open air, experience little or nothing more of the

real sensations of hunger and thirst. In this case the body is cheated of its

nutriment and drink, and the cutaneous vessels are at the same time unnaturally

forced to absorb from the atmosphere as much moisture as is requisite to carry

on the functions of life.

 

Confirmed coffee-drinkers pass much more urine than the quantity of fluids they

drink. The most natural demands of nature are stifled. (Thus they gradually

approach – thanks be to the divine beverage! – to the condition of the blessed

spirits above; a true commencement of beatification here below.)

 

The all-bountiful Preserver of all livings beings, made the healthy man feel

uncomfortable on taking exercise immediately after having satisfied his appetite

with food; this uncomfortable feeling was intended to compel us to leave off our

business and to rest both the body and the mind, in order that the important

function of digestion might be commenced undisturbed. A lassitude of body and

mind, a constriction in the region of the stomach, a kind of disagreeable

pressure, a fullness and tension in the abdomen, & c., on taking exercise, remind

us when we attempt to exert our energies immediately after a meal, of the rest

that is now required – and of we attempt to exercise our thinking faculty, there

occurs a lassitude of the mental powers, a dulness of the head, a coldness of

the limbs, accompanied by warmth of the face; and the pressive sensation in the

stomach, combined with a disagreeable sensation of tension in the abdomen,

becomes still more intolerable, proving that exerting the mental powers at the

commencement of the process of digestion, is more unnatural and more hurtful

than even exertion of the body.

 

Coffee puts a sudden stop to this lassitude of mind and body, and removes the

disagreeable sensation in the abdomen after a meal. The more refined gourmands

drink it immediately after dinner – and they obtain this unnatural effect in a

high degree. The become gay, and feel as light as though they had taken little

or nothing little or nothing into their stomach.

 

The wise Regulator of our nature has also sought to compel us by disagreeable

sensations to evacuate the accumulated excrement. There occurs an intolerable

anxiety conjoined with a no less disagreeable feeling of straining, whereby all

the agreeable sensations of life are put a stop to, and, as it were, swallowed

up in it, until the evacuation is commenced. It is a necessary part of our

nature that there should be some effort in the expulsion of the excrements.

 

But this has been provided against by the refining spirit of our age, which has

sought to elude this law of nature likewise. In order artificially to promote

and hasten the time required for digestion, which in the order of things is

several hours, and to escape the anxious, frequently slowly increasing call to

stool, the degenerate mortals of our times, who strain after enjoyment and have

a childish dread of all uncomfortable sensations, find their means of escape in

coffee.

 

Our intestines excited by coffee (in its primary action) to more rapid

peristaltic movements, force their contents but half digested more quickly

towards the anus, and the gourmand imagines he has discovered a splendid

digestive agent. But the liquid chyme which serves to nourish the body, can in

this short time neither be properly altered (digested) in the stomach, nor

sufficiently taken up by the absorbents in the intestinal canal; hence the mass

passes through the unnaturally active bowels, without parting with more than the

half of its nutritious particles for the supply of the body, and arrives at the

excretory orifice still in a half-liquid state. Of a truth a most excellent

digestive agent, far surpassing nature!

 

Moreover, during thee evacuation itself the anus us excited by the primary

action of the coffee to more rapid dilatation and contraction, and the faeces

pass out soft, almost without effort, and more frequently than in the case of

healthy individuals who do not partake of coffee.

 

These and other natural pains and disagreeable sensations, which are a part of

the wise ordering of our nature, are diminished and rendered almost unnoticeable

by the primary action of coffee more than by any other artificial means. As

quick as lightening there arise voluptuous images in the mind from very moderate

exciting cause, and the excitation of the genitals to complete ecstasy become

the work of a few seconds; the ejaculation of the semen is almost

irrestrainable. The sexual desire is excited by coffee from ten to fifteen years

too soon, in the tenderest, immaturest age in both sexes; a refinement

(Enjoyment! Enjoyment! Is the cry of our age – quicker, uninterrupted enjoyment

of life at whatever cost! And this object is to a certain degree attained by

means of this beverage, that accelerates and squanders the vital powers.) that

has the most perceptible influence on our morality and mortality – not to speak

of the earlier impotence that follows as a natural consequence therefrom. (

[Who, among all the medicinal writers of this period 91803) has thought so

justy, and written so wisely, as Hahnemann? Who among his contemporaries has

promulgated so many facts which have been confirmed by modern investigations as

the founder of homoeopathy?] – Am-P.)

 

In an individual of very irritable temperament, or who has already been

enervated by the copious use of coffee and a sedentary life, the effects I have

mentioned appear in a still more prominent light. Every unprejudiced person must

perceive in the corporeal derangements and sensations affected by coffee,

something unnatural, an over-stimulation. An excessive sensitiveness, or a

gaiety greatly disproportioned to the object of it, a tenderness almost

partaking of a convulsive character, an inordinate sorrowfulness, a wit that is

not altogether under the restraints of reason, an excessive distortion of the

features approaching to caricature, under circumstances where a mere smile, a

little joke a slight perplexity, a moderate expression of grief or sympathy,

would have sufficed.

 

Even the muscles of the rest of the body exhibit an unnatural excessive activity

– all is life, all is motion (though there may be but little cause for it)

during the first hour after partaking of strong, or (to use the often inaccurate

language of the world) good coffee. The ideas and the pictures of the fancy flow

in rapid succession and in a continuous stream before the seat of the

imagination and sensation in the brain – an artificially accelerated,

artificially exalted life!

 

In the natural state we require some effort to remember clearly things long

past; immediately after taking coffee the stores of memory spring, so to speak,

into our mouth – and the consequence often is loquacity, hurried chattering, and

letting things escape from our lips that we ought not to have spoken about.

 

Moderation and purpose are entirely wanting. The cold considerate earnestness of

our forefathers, the firm steadfastness of will, of resolve, and of judgement,

the endurance of the not rapid but powerful movements of the body, adapted to

the object object in view, that used to consitute the original national

character of the Germans – the whole sublime original stamp of out descent

disappears before this medicinal beverage, and changes into over-hasty

disclosures, hurried resolves, immatured judgements, frivolity, changeableness,

talkativeness, irresolution, flighty mobility of the muscles, without the

production of any durable impression, and theatrical behaviour. (Who can tell

what enervating dietetic practices it was by which those admirable heroic

virtues of patriotism, love of children, inviolable constancy, unshakable

integrity, and strict fulfilment of duties (the well-known attributes of by-gone

times) have in our days almost dwindled down into paltry egotism! Like wise the

single heroic virtues, are now-a days (by what enervating dietitic practices?)

split up into petty intrigues, concealed trickeries and artificies, and

distributed over myriads of individuals – compelling the uncontaminated person

to exercise much caution every step he takes! Which is the more injurious, a

single bomb-shell, or a million of invisible books, distributed every where to

catch the feet of the unwary?)

 

I well know that in order to revel in the dreams of fancy, in order to compose

frivolous novels, and light, playful witticisms, the German must drink coffee –

the German lady requires strong coffee in order to sparkle with wit and

sentiment in fashionable circles. The ballet dancer, the improvisator, the

conjurer, the juggler, the sharper, and the keeper of a faro-bank, all require

coffee, as likewise the fashionable musician for his giddy rapidity of

execution, and the omnipresent fashionable physician, to enable him to rush

through his ninety visits in forenoon. Let us leave to these people their

unnatural stimulant, together with its evil effects to their own health and the

welfare of mankind!

 

But this much is at least certain, - the most refined sensualist, the most

devoted debauchee, could have discovered on the whole surface of the globe no

other dietitic medicinal substance besides coffee, (And to certain extent tea

also.)

 

Capable of changing our usual feelings foe some hours into agreeable ones only,

of producing in us for some hours into agreeable ones only, of producing in us

for some hours, rather a jovial, even a petulant gaiety, a livelier wit, an

exalted imagination above what is natural to our temperament, of quickening the

movement of our muscles to a kind of trembling activity, of spurring on the

ordinary quiet pace of our digestive and excretory organs to double velocity, of

keeping the sexual practice in an almost involuntary state of excitation, of

silencing the useful pangs of hunger and thirst, of banishing blessed sleep from

our weary limbs, and artificially producing in them even a kind of liveliness

when the whole creation of our hemisphere fulfils its destiny by enjoying

refreshing repose in the silent lap of night.

 

Thus we despotically overthrow the wise arrangement of nature, but not without

injury to ourselves!

 

When the first transient effect of coffee has departed after a few hours, there

follows gradually the opposite state, the secondary action. The more striking

the former was, so much the more observable and disagreeable is the latter.

 

All persons do not suffer equally from the abuse of a medicinal beverage such as

coffee is.

 

Our systems are so admirably arranged that if we live agreeably to nature in

other respects a few errors in diet, if they be not too great, are tolerably

harmless.

 

Thus, for instance, the day-labourer or peasant in Germany drinks brandy, which

is so pernicious in itself, almost every morning; but if he only take a small

portion at a time, he will often attain a pretty considerable age. His health

suffers little. The excellence of his constitution and his otherwise healthy

mode of life counteract the injurious effects of his dram almost without letting

a trace appear.

 

Now, if instead of brandy the day-labourer or peasant drink a couple of cups of

weak coffee, the same thing occurs. His robust body, the vigorous exercise of

his limbs, and quantity of fresh air he inhales everyday, repel the hurtful

effects of his beverage, and his health suffers little or nothing in

consequence.

 

But the bad effects of coffee becomes much more perceptible when these

favourable circumstances are not present.

 

Man can, no doubt, enjoy a kind of health, though his occupation confines him to

the house – or even to one room – even though he has to live a very sedentary

life in the room – even though he has to live a very sedentary life in the room,

and his body is delicately constituted, provided he live in other respects

conformably with his taste. Under the moderate use of only easily digestible,

mild, simple, purely nutritious, almost unspiced food and drink, along with a

prudent moderation of the passions and frequent renewal of the air in the rooms,

even women, without any great exercise, (Under such circumstances prisoners

also.)enjoy a kind of health which doubtless can be readily compromised by

external causes, but which, if these are avoided, may still be termed a moderate

degree of health. In such persons the action of all morbific substances, that is

, of all medicines, is much more striking and severe than in robust individuals

accustomed to labour in the open air, who are able to bear some very hurtful

things without particular injury.

 

These weakly dwellers in rooms live in the low level of their health but half a

life, if I may use the expression; all their sensations, their energy, their

vital functions, are somewhat below par, and they eagerly resort to a beverage

that so powerfully exalts for some hours their vital energy and their feeling of

existence, unconcerned about the results and the secondary action of this

palliative.

 

This secondary action resembles their state before partaking of the coffee, only

it is somewhat stronger.

 

When the few hours of the above described primary action of this medicinal

beverage, that representation of artificially exalted vital energy, is gone,

there then gradually creeps on a yawning drowsiness and greater inactivity than

in the ordinary state, the movements of the body become more difficult than

formerly, all the excessive gaiety of the previous hours changes into obtuseness

of the senses. If, during the first hours changes into obtuseness of the senses.

If, during the first hours after drinking the coffee, the digestion and the

expulsion of the excrements were hastened, now the flatus becomes painfully

incarcerated in the intestines, and the expulsion of the faeces becomes more

difficult ad slower than in the former state. If, in the first hours, an

agreeable warmth pervaded the frame, this factitious vital-spark now gradually

becomes cold. All external agents appear less agreeable than before. More

ill-humoured than ordinarily, they are more given to peevishness. The sexual

passion which was excited by the coffee in the first hours becomes all the

colder and more obtuse. A kind of speedily satiated ravenous hunger takes the

place of the healthy desire for nutriment, and yet eating and drinking oppress

the stomach more than previously. They have greater difficulty in getting to

sleep than formerly, and the sleep is heavier than it used to be before they

took coffee, and on awaking they are more sleepy, more discouraged more

melancholy than usual.

 

But look! All these evils are rapidly driven away by a renewed application to

this hurtful palliative – a new, artificial life commences – only it has a

somewhat shorter duration than the first time, and thus its repetition becomes

ever more frequently necessary, or the beverage must always be made stronger in

order to enable it again to excite life for a few hours.

 

By such means the body of the person whose occupation confines him to his room

degenerates all the more. The injurious effects of the secondary action of this

medicinal drink spread farther around, and strike their roots too deeply to

allow of their being again effaced, if only for a few hours, by a mere

repetition of the same palliative more frequently or in stronger doses.

 

The skin now becomes generally more sensitive to the cold, and even to the open

air though not cold; the digestion becomes obstructed, the bowels become

constipated for several days at a time, flatulence occasions anxiety and causes

a number of painful sensations. The constipation only alternates with diarrhoea,

not with a healthy state of the bowels. Sleep is obtained with difficulty, and

bears more resemblance to a slumber to a slumber that causes no refreshment. On

awaking there are remarkable confusion of the head, half-waking dreams, slowness

of recollecting himself, helplessness of the limbs, and a kind of joylessness

that throws a dark shade over all God’s lovely nature. The beneficient emotions

of the heart, warm philanthropy, gratitude, compassion, heroism, strength and

nobility of the mind, and joyousness, change into pusillanimity, indifference,

insensible hardness of heart, variable humour, melancholy.

 

The use of coffee as a beverage is continued, and sensitiveness alternates every

more with insensibility, over-hasty resolves with irresolution, noisy

quarrelsomeness with cowardly compliance, affectation of friendship with

malicious envy, transient rapture with joylessness, grinning smiling with

inclination to shed tears – symptoms of constant hovering betwixt excitement and

depression of the mind and the body.

 

It would be no easy task for me to indicate all the maladies, that under the

names of debility, nervous affections and chronic diseases, prevail among the

coffee-drinking set, enervating humanity and causing degeneration of mind and

body.

 

But it must not be imagined that all the evil results I have named occur to

every coffee-bibber in the same degree! No, one suffers more from this, another

from that symptom of the secondary action of coffee. My description includes the

whole coffee-drinking race; all their maladies which arise from this source I

have arranged together, as they have from time to time come under my notice.

 

The palliative agreeable sensation which the coffee distributes from some hours

through the finest fibres, leaves behind it, as a secondary action, an

extraordinary susceptibility to painful sensations, which always becomes greater

and greater, the longer, the oftener, the stronger and the greater the quantity

in which the coffee is drunk. Very slight things (that would make scarcely any

impression on a healthy person not accustomed to the use of coffee) cause in the

coffee drinking lady megrim, a frequent often intolerable toothache, which comes

on, chiefly at night, with redness of the face and at length swelling of the

cheek – a painful drawing and tearing in different parts of the body, on one

side of the face or at one time in one limb, at another in another. (This

drawing tearing in the limbs caused by coffee in its secondary action and when

its use is persisted in for a long time, is not in the joints, but from one

joint to the other. It appears to be more in the flesh or cellular tissue than

in the bones, is unattended by swelling or other abnormal appearance, and there

is scarcely any tenderness on touching the part. Our nosologists know nothing

about it.) The body has a special tendency to erysipelas, either in the legs

(hence the frequency of old ulcers there) or (when suckling) in the mammae, or

on one half of the face. Apprehensive and flying heat are her daily complaints,

and nervous semilateral headache her property. (The megrim above alluded to,

which only appears after some exciting cause, as vexation, overloading of the

stomach, a chill, & c., generally very rapidly and at all times of the day,

differs entirely from the so-called nervous hemicrania. The latter occurs in the

morning, soon or immediately after waking, and increases gradually. The pain is

almost intolerable, often of a burning character, the external coverings of the

skull are also intolerably sensitive and painful on the least touch. Body and

mind seem both to be insufferably sensitive. Apparently destitute of all

strength, they seek a solitary and of possible dark spot, where , in order to

avoid the daylight they pass the time with closed eyes in a kind of waking

slumber, usually on a couch raised in the back, or in an arm chair, quite

motionless. Every movement, every noise increases their pains. The avoid

speaking themselves and listening to the conversation of others. Their body is

colder than usual, though without rigour; the hands and feet in particular are

very cold. Everything is distasteful to them, but chiefly eating and drinking,

for an incessant nausea hinders them from taking anything. In bad cases the

nausea amounts to vomiting of mucus, but the headache is seldom alleviated

thereby. The bowels are constipated. This headache almost never goes off until

evening; in very bad cases I have seen it last thirty-six hours, so that it only

disappeared the following evening. In slighter cases its original producer,

coffee, shortens its duration in a palliative manner, but it communicated to the

system the tendency to produce it after a still shorter interval. It recurs at

undetermined times, every fortnight, three, four weeks, & c. It comes on without

any exciting cause, quite unexpectedly; even the night previously the patient

seldom feels any premonitory signs of the nervous headache that is to come on

the next morning.)

 

From moderate errors of diet and disagreeable mental emotions there occur

painful affections of the chest, stomach and abdomen (known by the inaccurate

name of spasms) – the catamenia come on with pains, are not regular or the

discharge is less copious and at length quite scanty; it is watery or slimy;

leucorrhoea (generally of an acrid character) prevails almost the whole time,

from one period to another, or completely supersedes the menstrual flux –

coition is often painful. The earthy, yellowish or quite pale complexion, the

dull eye surrounded by blue rings, the blue lips, the flaccid muscular tissue,

the shrivelled breasts, are the almost suppressed menses alternate with serious

uterine hemorrhages. In males there occur painful hemorrhoids and nocturnal

emissions of semen. In both sexes the sexual power becomes gradually

extinguished. The normal exuberant energy of the embrace of a healthy couple

becomes a worthless bagatelle. Impotence of both sexes and sterility, inability

to suckle a child, ensues. – The monster of nature, that hollow-eyed ghost,

onnanism, is generally concealed behind the coffee-table (though indulgence in

the perusal of meretricious novels, over-exertion of the mind, bad company and a

sedentary life in close apartments, contribute their share).

 

As an inordinate indulgence in coffee has for its secondary effect to dispose

the body greatly to all kinds of disagreeable sensations and most acute pains,

it will be readily comprehended how it, more than any other hurtful substance we

are acquainted with, excites a great tendency to caries of the bones. Nor error

of diet causes the teeth to decay more easily and certainly than indulgence in

coffee. Coffee alone (with the exception of grief and the abuse of mercury)

destroys the teeth in the shortest space of time. (Observations on which I can

depend have convinced me if this.) The confined air of a room and overloading

the stomach (especially at night) contribute their share to this effect. But

coffee by itself is quite capable of destroying in a short space of time this

irreparable ornament of the mouth, this indispensable accessory organ for

distinct speech and for the intimate mixture of the food with the digestive

saliva, or at least of rendering them black and yellow. The loss of the front

(incisor) teeth is chiefly due to the abuse of coffee.

 

If I except the true spina ventosa, there occurs scarcely a singly case of

caries of the bones in children (if they have not been over-dosed with mercury)

from any other cause than from coffee? (These ulcerations of the bones, which

lie concealed beneath elevated, hard, bluish red swellings of the soft parts,

exude an albuminous looking mucus, mixed with some cheese-like matter, It has

very little smell. The pains of the affected part are very shooting in their

character, The rest of the body presents a pure picture of the coffee

dyscrasia.) Besides these, there are in children other deep-seated flesh

abscesses orifice, which are often solely to be ascribed to the action of the

coffee.

 

As a rule, coffee acts most injuriously on children; the more tender their age,

the worse its effects. Although it is incapable of itself of producing true

rickets, but can only accelerate them, in conjunction with their special

exciting cause (food composed of unfermented vegetable substances, and the air

of close, damp rooms), yet it of itself excites in little children, even when

their other food is wholesome and the air in which they live good, a kind on

infantile hectic. Which is not much less sad in its results. Their complexion

becomes pale, their muscles quite flaccid. It is only after a long time that

they learn to walk a little, but then their gait is uncertain, they easily fall,

and wish always to be carried. They stammer in their speech. They wish for a

great variety of things, but relish nothing heartily, The drollery, happiness

and liveliness that characterize the age of childhood are changed into indolent

dejection; nothing gives them pleasure, nothing makes them contented; they enjoy

only a sort of half lief. They are very easily startled, and timid. Diarrhoea

alternates with costiveness. Viscid mucus rattles in their chest as they

breathe, especially when they are asleep, which no amount of coughing can

remove: they have always got a wheezing at the chest. Their teeth come with much

difficulty and with convulsion fits; they are imperfect, and fall out decayed

before the period for changing them arrives. Mostly every evening, just before

bed-time or after lying down in bed, they get redness and heat on one or both

cheeks. The sleep very imperfectly, toss about at night, often want to drink;

they then perspire, not only on the forehead, but also on the hairy scalp,

particularly at the back of the head, and whine and moan in their sleep.

 

They get through every disease with difficulty, and their recovery is very slow

and imperfect.

 

They are frequently subject to a chronic inflammation of the eyes, not

unfrequently accompanied by an eruption in the face, along with peculiar

relaxation of the upper eyelid, which prevents them raising it, even when the

redness and swelling of the lids are but moderate. This kind of ophthalmia, that

often lasts for several years, making them frequently lie upon the face with

constant peevishness and crying, or conceal them selves in a dark place where

they remain lying or sitting in a stooping posture, this ophthalmia, I say,

chiefly affects the cornea, covers it with red vessels and at last with dark

spots, or there occur phlyctneulae and little ulcers on it, that often cat

deeply into the cornea and threaten blindness.

 

This ophthalmia and that rattling at the chest and the other ailments above

described, attack even infants at the breast, who take nothing but their

mother’s milk, if the mother indulges in coffee and inhabits a close room. How

penetrating must not the hurtful power of this medicinal beverage be, that even

infants at the breast suffer from it!

 

After children, coffee acts, as I have said, most injuriously on the female sex,

and literary people whose occupation is sedentary and confines them them to

their rooms. To these may be added workmen engaged in a sedentary trade.

 

The bad effects of coffee are, as I have above mentioned, most effectually

diminished by great activity and exercise in the open air, - but not permanently

removed.

 

Some individuals also find out as if by instinct, a sort of antidote to coffee

in the use of spirituous liquors. It is impossible to deny that they do possess

some antidotal powers. These are, however, mere stimulants, without any

nutritive quality; that is to say, they are likewise medicinal substances,

which, when daily used as articles of diet, produce other injurious effects, and

yet are unable to prevent the hurtful action of the coffee from taking effect, -

what they cause are artificial ameliorations, of the vital functions, followed

by morbid effects, though of a different, more complex nature. Leaving off the

use of coffee (It is by no means easy to do away with an inveterate habit of

using coffee. – I first endeavour to convince my patients seriously of the

urgent and indispensible necessity of discontinuing its use. Truth grounded on

obvious experience seldom fails to produce conviction – almost never, when it is

urged from the philanthrophic heart of a physician, who, convinced himself

himself of the goodness of his cause, is thoroughly penetrated by the truth of

his maxims. Nothing will then prevent their reception, there is no question of

any private interest on the part of the doctor; and nothing but pure gain on the

side of the party he wishes to convince.

 

If we have attained this object (whether this is the case or no, he who has a

knowledge of human nature can tell by the way the patient receives his advice),

we may advice that the quantity of coffee taken by reduced by a cup to be

continued for a week longer, until this can either be left off at once, or it

may be continued on every alternate day for another week, according to

circumstances.

 

If we have to do with persons on whom we can rely, the affair is managed in the

course of four weeks. But should some faint-heartedness or indecision on the

part of slaves to coffee make its accomplishment difficult, or should the weak

state do the health-make its discontinueance be too severely felt, we would do

well for every cup of coffee we take away, to allow a cup of tea to be drunk,

until in the course of a week nothing but tea (a similar but lesser evil) is

drunk, and this, as it has not had time to become a habitual beverage, may be

more easily diminished, until at last nothing more of the sort is taken, but

only a couple of cups of warm milk for breakfast, in place of coffee or tea.

 

Whilst thus breaking off the habit, it is indispensible that the body be

refreshed and strengthened by daily walks in the open air, by amusements of an

innocent character, and by appropriate food, if we wish that the injurious

effects of the coffee should disappear, and the individual be confirmed in his

resolution to give it up.

 

And if all goes on well, it will not be a bad plan for the doctor, or a friend

in his stead, to assure himself from time to time of the true conversion of his

patient, and if necessary, uphold his resolution when the force of example in

company seems to cause it to waver.) is the chief remedy for these insidious and

deeply penetrating injurious effects, and corporeal exercise in the open air

tends to promote the subsequent recovery. If however body and mind be sunk too

low, there are some medicines very useful for that state, but this is not the

proper place to enumerate them, as I am not at present writing for medical men.

When I describe the daily use of coffee as very prejudicial, and when I shew

from observations and experience f many years that to relaxes and withers the

energy of our body and mind, some may retort upon me the appellation “medicinal

beverage,” which I must unhesitatingly bestow upon coffee.

 

“Medicines are surely wholesome things,” says the aninitated.

 

They are so ; but only under certain indispensible conditions. It is only when

the medicine is suitable for health, and to employ a medicine as a beverage in

the ordinary healthy state, is hurtful procedure, a self-evident contradiction.

I prize them medicinal powers of coffee when it is appropriately employed as a

medicine, as much as those of any other medicament. There is nought superfluous

in God’s creation; every thing is created for the weal of mankind, particularly

the most powerful things, to which class coffee belongs in an especial degree.

But let the following facts be borne in mind.

 

Every single medicine develops in the healthy human body some special

alterations, that are peculiar to itself exclusively. When these are known, and

when the medicine is employed in cases of disease that have an almost exact

similarity with the alteration that have an almost exact similarity with the

alteration that the medicine is capable of itself producing (in the healthy

body), a radical cure takes place. This employment of the medicine is the

curative one, the only one to be relied on in chronic diseases.

 

In speaking of this power of a medicine to alter the human body in a manner

peculiar to itself, I allude to its primary or initiatory action. I have said

above that the primary action of a medicine (for some hours after it has been

taken) is the direct opposite of its secondary action, or the state in which it

leaves the body whenever its first action is past.

 

Now if the primary action of a medicine be the exact opposite of the morbid

condition of the body we seek to cure, its employment is palliative. Almost

instantaneous amendment ensues, - but a few hours afterwards the malady returns

and attains a greater height than it had before the employment of the remedy,

the secondary action of the medicine, which resembled the original disease,

aggravates the latter. A miserable method of treatment when we have with do with

a chronic malady.

 

I shall give an example. The primary action of opium in the healthy system is to

cause a stupefying snoring sleep, and its secondary action – the opposite –

sleeplessness. Now if the physician will be so foolish as treat a morbid,

habitual sleeplessness with opium, he acts in a palliative manner, The stupid,

snoring, unrefreshing sleep speedily follows the ingestion of the opium, but its

secondary action, as I have stated, is sleeplessness, an addition to his already

habitual sleeplessness, when is now accordingly aggravated. Twenty-four hours

afterwards the patient sleeps still less than before he took the opium; a

stronger dose of the latter must now be given, the secondary action of which is

a still greater sleeplessness, that is, an aggravation of the malady, which the

foolish man imagined he was curing.

 

In like manner, coffee proves a bad palliative remedy when it is used as a

medicinal agent, for example, in cases of habitual constipation proceeding from

inactivity of the bowels (as is usually the case with those who lead a sedentary

life in their room.) – as is often done by medical men. Its primary action is,

as I have before stated, the reverse of this state, - therefore acts here as a

palliative, and if it be used for the first time, or only on rare occasions, it

speedily produces a motion of the bowels, but the following days, under the

secondary action, the constipation becomes all the greater. If we again seek to

remove this in the same palliative manner by means of coffee, more of it must be

drunk, or to must be made stronger, and still the habitual constipation is not

thereby eradicated, for it always returns more obstinately on the recurrence of

the secondary action of the coffee, whenever this palliative administration of

the coffee is discontinued, or stronger and more frequent potations potations of

it are not taken, which always aggravate the disease and entail other maladies.

 

It will be found that the medical excuses offered by coffee drinkers in

justifications of this habit almost all rest on some such palliative relief it

affords them, and yet nothing is more certain than the experience that a

long-continued palliative employment of a drug is injurious, but the palliative

employment of drugs as articles of diet is the most injurious of all.

 

Therefore when I, whilst deprecating its abuse as an everyday beverage, commend

the great medicinal virtues of coffee, I do the latter merely in reference to

its curative employment for chronic ailments that bear a great resemblance to

its primary action, (For example when, in a person unaccustomed to the use of

coffee, there is present (it may be a habitual) indisposition, composed of a

frequent, painless evacuation of soft faeces and frequent inclination to go to

stool, an unnatural sleeplessness, excessive irritability and agility, and a

want of appetite and thirst, but without any diminution of the perception of the

flavour of food and drink, in such a case coffee will, must effect a radical

cure in the course of a short time. In like manner it is, in the frequently

dangerous symptoms brought on a by sudden, great, joyful mental of labour-pains,

which bear much resemblance to the primary effects of coffee.) and in reference

to its palliative employment in acute diseases threatening rapid danger, which

bear a great resemblance to the secondary effects of coffee. (The following are

examples of the excellent palliative employment of coffee in diseases that come

on rapidly and require speedy relief; sea-sickness, poisoning by apparent death

of drowned, suffocated, but especially of frozen persons, as I have frequently

had the satisfaction of witnessing.) This is the only rational and wise mode of

employing this medicinal beverage which is abused by hundreds of millions of

individuals to their hurt, is understood by few, but which is extremely

wholesome when used in its proper place.

 

 

 

 

 

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