Chapter I: HAVE singled out Simon Paulli from among the adversaries of Coffee,

for no other motive than to shew from what tales so learned a man confesses he supports a notion, that Coffee (like Tea to the Chinese) acted as a great drier to the _Persians_, and abated aphrodisiacal warmth. This opinion has been since received, and propagated from him, as he received and propagated it from its fabulous origin. The facts have been refuted by Sir _Thomas Roe_, and many other travellers.

Sir _Thomas Herbert_, who was in the East in 1626, tells us, that the Persians themselves have a very different opinion of Coffee.--“They say that Coffee comforts the brain, expels melancholy and sleep, purges choler, lightens the spirits, and begets an excellent concoction; and by custom becomes delicious. But all these virtues do not conciliate their liking of it so much as the romantic notion, that it was first invented and brewed by the Angel _Gabriel_, to restore _Mahomet’s_ decayed moisture; which it did so effectually, that he never drank it but he made nothing to unhorse forty men, and in his amours to rival the fame of Hercules[65].”

[65] Page 311. Ed. 3. Setting aside the hyperbolical part of this
Persian opinion, here is at least a tradition, that this liquor was
used in Arabia in the time of _Mahomet_, whose flight from _Mecca_
was in the year 622. All the ancient nations who made much use of the
_Legumina_ in their diet, prepared many of them by torrefaction; and
it is most probable, that the Arabians were acquainted with the art
of preparing a liquor from the parched or roasted berries of a tree
that was indigenous among them, prior to its use in Egypt and Persia,
or in any of the neighbouring countries.

MANY have been the dogmas concerning Coffee: some authors alledge that it is _dry_, and therefore good for the gross and phlegmatic, but hurtful to lean people; some contend that it is _cold_, and therefore good for sanguine, bilious, and hot constitutions; others, that it is _hot_, and therefore bad for the sanguine and bilious, but good for cold constitutions. Some assure us, that it acts only as a _sedative_; others, that it acts only as a _stimulant_. With such disputants there is no entering the lists. Medical science disclaims their pretensions, as creations of the imagination; and transfers their contest for decision to a Synod of Turkish Priests.

I AM aware that there are people who are decisively of opinion, that Coffee is injurious “in thin habits and bilious temperaments, in melancholic and hypochondriacal disorders, and to persons subject to hæmorrhages.”--_Willis_, _Cheyne_, and others, as well as _Lewis_, who conceived this notion to have been his own, were in some degree of this opinion[66].

[66] Ab hac sorbitione abstinere debent biliosi, quibus præservida
sunt viscera, qui hæmorrhoidibus quibuscunque erysipelati sunt
obnoxii, melancholici, et hypochondriaci. _Geoffry_, De Vegetab. Tom.
II. sect. I. p. 437.

IN habits subject to hæmorrhages, particularly those of the pulmonic and uterine kind, the interdiction of Coffee is every where justly admitted[67].

[67] Yet Dr. _Percival_ says, it is “powerfully sedative.” Vol. I. p.
127.