The World of Caffeine (58 page)
Read The World of Caffeine Online
Authors: Bonnie K. Bealer Bennett Alan Weinberg
The London Coffeehouse during the Commonwealth and Restoration
This broadside, distributed by Pasqua Rosée, proprietor of London’s first coffeehouse, was the first printed advertisement for coffee in England. After informing the reader that coffee hails from the “deserts of Arabia,” Rosée recommends that half a pint of the water in which the ground beans had been boiled should be downed on an empty stomach, a manner of consumption intended to maximize the bewilderingly wide range of pharmacological benefits specified in the remainder of the text. It is interesting to note that coffee is presented as a drug only and no notice is taken of its possible enjoyment as a comestible. Note especially the reference to its humoral properties, “cold and dry,” and how it readies a person for work and interferes with sleep:
THE VERTUE OF THE COFFEE DRINK
First made and publickly sold in England by Pasqua Rosee.
The grain or berry called coffee, groweth upon little trees only in the deserts of Arabia. It is brought from thence, and drunk generally throughout all the Grand Seignour’s dominions. It is a simple, innocent thing, composed into a drink by being dried in an oven, and ground to powder, and boiled up with spring water, and about half a pint of it to be drunk fasting an hour before, and not eating an hour after, and to be taken as hot as possibly can be endured; the which will never fetch the skin oft the mouth, or raise any blisters by reason of that heat.
The Turks’ drink at meals and other times is usually water, and their diet consists much of fruit; the crudities whereof are very much corrected by this drink.
The quality of this drink is cold and dry; and though it be a drier, yet it neither heats nor inflames more than hot posset. It so incloseth the orifice of the stomach, and fortifies the heat within, that it is very good to help digestion; and therefore of great use to be taken about three or four o’clock afternoon, as well as in the morning. It much quickens the spirits, and makes the heart lightsome; it is good against sore eyes, and the better if you hold your head over it and take in the steam that way. It suppresseth fumes exceedingly, and therefore is good against the head-ache, and will very much stop any defluxion of rheums that distil from the head upon the stomach, and so prevent and help consumptions and the cough of the lungs.
It is excellent to prevent and cure the dropsy, gout, and scurvy. It is known by experience to be better than any other drying drink for people in years, or children that have any running humours upon them, as the king’s evil, & tc. It is a most excellent remedy against the spleen, hypochondriac winds, and the like. It will prevent drowsiness, and make one fit for business, if one have occasion to watch, and therefore you are not to drink of it after supper, unless you intend to be watchful, for it will hinder sleep for three or four hours.
It is observed that in Turkey, where this is generally drunk, that they are not troubled with the stone, gout, dropsy, or scurvy, and that their skins are exceeding clear and white. It is neither laxative nor restringent.
Made and sold in St. Michael’s-alley, in Cornhill,
by Pasqua Rosee, at the sign of his own head.
During the Commonwealth and throughout the Restoration, coffeehouses were an ebullient forum for a heterogeneous assembly, including rich and poor, aristocrats and merchants, academics and the unlettered. To introduce restraints that might prevent disharmony and disorder and encourage conviviality, proprietors printed the following bill of regulations on large sheets, which they posted conspicuously on coffeehouse walls. The list, which encompasses rules of governing foul language, blasphemy, breaches of etiquette, gambling, paying for your fare, and treating others to a “dish” of the beverage that brought such a mixed group together, gives us a vivid picture of life in the coffeehouses in their first decades in England. It is addressed to men only, since women were barred from the English coffeehouses of the day:
Enter, Sirs, freely, but first, if you please, Peruse our civil orders, which are these.
First, gentry, tradesmen, all are welcome hither,
And may without affront sit down together:
Pre-eminence of place none here should mind,
But take the next fit seat that he can find:
Nor need any, if finer persons come,
Rise up for to assign to them his room;
To limit men’s expense, we think not fair,
But let him forfeit twelve-pence that shall swear[.]
He that shall any quarrel here begin,
Shall give each man a dish t’ atone the sin;
And so shall he, whose compliments extend
So far to drink in coffee to his friend;
Let noise of loud disputes be quite forborne,
Nor maudlin lovers here in corners mourn,
But all be brisk and talk, but not too much;
On sacred things, let none presume to touch,
Nor profane Scripture, nor saucily wrong
Affairs of state with an irreverent tongue:
Let mirth be innocent, and each man see
That all his jests without reflection be;
To keep the house more quiet and from blame,
We banish hence cards, dice, and every game;
Nor can allow of wagers, that exceed
Five shillings, which ofttimes do troubles breed;
Let all that’s lost or forfeited be spent
In such good liquor as the house doth vent.
And customers endeavour, to their powers,
For to observe still, seasonable hours.
Lastly, let each man what he calls for pay,
And so you’re welcome to come every day.
The “Triumphs of London, 1675,” by Thomas Jordan (1612–85), English poet and pamphleteer, was a poem celebrating the marvels of coffeehouse society, particularly as the center of news, rumors, controversies, and the exchange of information. The lines “So great an university,/I think there n’er was any;/In which you may a scholar be,/For spending of a penny” were the origin of the famous coffeehouse epithet, “penny university.”
Triumphs of London, 1675
You that delight in wit and mirth,
And love to hear such news
That come from all parts of the earth,
Turks, Dutch, and Danes, and Jews:
I’ll send ye to the rendezvous,
Where it is smoaking new;
Go hear it at a coffee-house,
It cannot but be true.
There battails and sea-fights are fought,
And bloudy plots displaid;
They know more things than e’er was thought,
Or ever was bewray’d:
No money in the minting-house
Is half so bright and new;
And coming from the Coffee-House,
It cannot but be true.
Before the navies fell to work,
They knew who should be winner;
They there can tell ye what the Turk
Last Sunday had to dinner.
Who last did cut Du Ruiter’s corns,
Amongst his jovial crew;
Or who first gave the devil horns,
Which cannot but be true.
A fisherman did boldly tell,
And strongly did avouch,
He caught a shole of mackerell,
They parley’d all in Dutch;
And cry’d out, Yaw, yaw, yaw, mine hare,
And as the draught theyh drew,
They stunk for fear that Monk was there:
This sounds as if ’twere true.
There’s nothing done in all the world,
From monarch to the mouse;
But every day or night ’tis hurl’d
Into the coffee-house:
What Lilly or what Booker cou’d
By art not bring about,
At Coffee-house you’ll find a brood,
Can quickly find it out.
They know who shall in times to come,
Be either made or undone,
From great St. Peter’s-street in Rome,
To Turnbal-street in London.
. . .
They know all that is good or hurt,
To damn ye or to save ye;
There is the college and the court,
The country, camp, and navy.
So great an university,
I think there ne’er was any;
In which you may a scholar be,
For spending of a penny.
Here men do talk of everything,
With large and liberal lungs,
Like woman at a gossiping,
With double tire of tongues,
They’ll give a broadside presently,
’Soon as you are in view:
With stories that you’ll wonder at,
Which they will swear are true.
You shall know there what fashions are,
How periwigs are curl’d;
And for a penny you shall hear
All novels in the world;
Both old and young, and great and small,
And rich and poor you’ll see;
Therefore let’s to the Coffee all,
Come all away with me.
In June 1667, after Charles II had spent the money allotted by Parliament for the English navy on debauchery, Du Ruiter, a Dutch admiral, took advantage of the vulnerability of the English position, blockading the Medway and Thames and destroying fortifications as far as Chatham and Gravesend. General Monk and Prince Rupert were then commanders of the English fleet. William Lilly (1602–1681), the celebrated English astrologer during the Commonwealth, predicted a victory over Charles I, which was regarded as fulfilled in the battle at Naseby. Jonathan Booker (1603–1667), another English astrologer, was a fishing-tackle maker on Tower Street during the reign of Charles I, before becoming a Cromwell partisan and winning popular acclaim by foretelling “the downfall of King and Popery.” Turnbal, now called Turnbull Street, had been a red-light district since Elizabethan times.
In his essay “London Coffee Houses in 1685,” Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859), English historian, essayist, and statesman, celebrates the coffeehouses of the Restoration, particularly Will’s, where the patrons converged from all quarters of English society, and where intellectual conversations, such as discussions of Aristotle’s requirement that the tragic drama be limited by the famous unities of place and time, were common fare. Will’s was especially renowned as the favorite haunt of John Dryden, the poet laureate, whose regular chair was moved from its place nearest the fire in winter to the cool air of the balcony in summer:
Nobody was excluded from these places who laid down his penny at the bar. Yet every rank and profession, and every shade of religious and political opinion had its own headquarters.
There were houses near St. James’ Park, where fops congregated, their heads and shoulders covered with black or flaxen wigs, not less ample than those which are now worn by the Chancellor and by the Speaker of the House of Commons. The atmosphere was like that of a perfumer’s shop. Tobacco in other form than that of richly scented snuff was held in abomination. If any clown, ignorant of the usages of the house, called for a pipe, the sneers of the whole assembly and the short answers of the waiters soon convinced him that he had better go somewhere else.
Nor, indeed, would he have far to go. For, in general, the coffee-houses reeked with tobacco like a guard room. Nowhere was the smoking more constant than at Will’s. That celebrated house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk was about poetical justice and the unities of place and time. Under no roof was a greater variety of figures to be seen. There were earls in stars and garters, clergymen in cossacks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from universities, translators and index makers in ragged coats of frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where John Dryden sate. In winter that chair was always in the warmest nook by the fire; in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to the Laureate, and to hear his opinion of Racine’s last tragedy, or of Bossu’s treatise on epic poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch from his snuff-box was an honor sufficient to turn the head of a young enthusiast.
There were coffee-houses where the first medical men might be consulted. Dr. John Radcliffe, who, in the year 1685, rose to the largest practice in London, came daily, at the hour when the Exchange was full, from his house in Bow street, then a fashionable part of the capital, to Garraway’s, and was to be found, surrounded by surgeons and apothecaries, at a particular table.
There were Puritan coffee-houses where no oath was heard, and where lank-haired men discussed election and reprobation through their noses; Jew coffee-houses, where dark-eyed money changers from Venice and Amsterdam greeted each other; and Popish coffee-houses, where, as good Protestants believed, Jesuits planned over their cups another great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot the king.
Supplementary Tables
Table 1. Caffeine Content of Foods and Beverages
Table 2. Caffeine Percentage by Weight: Natural Sources
Table 3. Caffeine Content of Soft Drinks
Table 4. Caffeine Content of Medications
Additional Studies of Caffeine’s Physical Effects
Caffeine and the Cardiovascular System
At least one study, published in 1996 by Dr. Lucy Mead and Dr. Michael Klag, both of Johns Hopkins University, has found a dose-related correlation between coffee consumption and the development of high blood pressure. This long-term study of more than one thousand male former Johns Hopkins medical students began in 1947, when the study’s founder, Dr. Carolyn Thomas, sought to identify the risk factors for developing high blood pressure. This is the only major study that, after excluding confounders such as family history, elevated blood pressure at the beginning of the study, smoking, and obesity, identified a strong link between coffee and hypertension. If the results are borne out by future research, coffee and caffeine intake may be considered an important factor in the causes of hypertension. However, even Mead and Klag say that such a conclusion is premature.
An additional important study minimizing caffeine’s effect on pre-existing high blood pressure is the Hypertension Detection and Follow-up Program, “a community-based five-year (1974–79) collaborative trial of antihypertensive treatment.”
1
The study considered more than ten thousand people between ages thirty and sixty-nine, from fourteen different population groups throughout the United States, who had a diastolic blood pressure of 90 Hg (high-normal) or above when the study began. After studying the subjects’ caffeine consumption from coffee, tea, and cola, researchers concluded there was no exacerbation of their condition owing to caffeine.
However, despite these results, the preponderance of studies suggests that
caution among hypertensives may still be
indicated
. For example, a 1995 study by researcher B.H. Sung, “Caffeine Elevates Blood Pressure Response to Exercise in Mild Hypertensive Men,” published in the
American Journal of Hypertension,
found an increase in blood pressure, heart rate, and work load on the heart after taking caffeine, even in some nonhypertensive men. Sung tested thirty men, twelve of whom had normal blood pressure (under 130/80) and eighteen of whom suffered from mild hypertension (levels between 140/90 and 160/95), who were given about 300 mg of caffeine mixed with grapefruit juice. Although only one non-hypertensive subject experienced any adverse effects with caffeine ingestion, four of the hypertensive subjects exhibited readings above 230/120, and seven showed increases in blood pressure that the experimenters called “excessive.” The normotensive subjects demonstrated no increase in heart rate, while the hypertensive group exhibited significantly greater heart rates on the days they consumed caffeine. The authors concluded that caffeine may cause a constriction of small arteries throughout the body and that the effects were great enough that people with high blood pressure should avoid using caffeine before and during their exercise.
2
Because fifty million Americans suffer from high blood pressure, if the effect is confirmed, this may be the most important danger caffeine offers to human health, apart from a still unevaluated threat posed by fetal or neonatal exposure.
Several studies have suggested that, in a healthy person, caffeine can actually improve the way the heart responds to exercise. For example, a 1995 study of caffeine conducted by Bruce Hardy, a pediatric cardiology fellow at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, and his colleagues at this institution found that, in patients with normal blood pressure, a dose of caffeine can
help
the heart handle exercise by slowing the heart rate, reducing blood pressure, and thus easing the work load on the heart. If these results seem surprising or even paradoxical to you, you are not alone. Hardy himself commented that “The outcomes of the study were a surprise to me. We would have thought the opposite would be true.” Although his conclusions were based on observations of lowered blood pressure and increased heart output in six healthy young men, Hardy asserted that it was plausible to imagine that people with heart disease (but without arrhythmia) could also benefit from an amount of caffeine equivalent to two cups of coffee. If this is so, it contradicts the conventional medical wisdom that has prompted doctors to routinely advise patients with heart problems to stop drinking coffee.
Another exercise benefit for some heart patients was asserted in a 1984 study
3
that claimed caffeine was a “booster of pain-free walking time for patients with chronic stable angina.”
4
This study found that drinking a couple cups of coffee increased the time such patients could exercise by as much as 12 percent, while decaffeinated coffee had no effect.
In our effort to disentangle the gastrointestinal effects of caffeine from those of coffee, we quickly encounter the peculiar fact that, while caffeine will stimulate the release of water and sodium from the small intestine, coffee will not do so, suggesting that some agent in coffee may neutralize caffeine’s effect in this regard. As most of us have experienced, coffee stimulates motility in the distal colon, that is, it promotes defecation; however, because this effect also occurs with decaffeinated coffee, it may have nothing to do with caffeine itself.
In a 1975 study by Cohen and Booth at the University of Pennsylvania,
5
the investigators found that coffee, whether caffeinated or decaffeinated, produced statistically significantly higher peak levels of gastric acid than caffeine alone. Parallel differences were found in their effects on esophageal-sphincter tone. As of this writing, the ingredient in coffee responsible for these effects on gastric acid and esophagealsphincter tone has not been determined.
6
Several studies subsequent to the work of Cohen and Booth have failed to find any causal relationship between caffeine and the incidence or exacerbation of peptic ulcers, although most of these considered caffeine’s effects only tangentially, and interfering variables were not well excluded. In any case, it is clear that drinking decaffeinated coffee is not a recommended alternative to regular coffee for patients with either a peptic ulcer or gastroesophageal reflux, a condition that commonly produces the symptoms of heartburn.
Premenstrual syndrome (PMS), striking between four and fourteen days before the menstrual period, may affect half of all women, and it encompasses a broader variety of symptoms than Gulf War syndrome. Some of the more than one hundred symptoms that have been blamed on this condition are: irritability, tiredness, breast swelling and tenderness, headache, anxiety, depression, cravings for sweet or salty foods, acne, and changes in sleep patterns. It may last for a couple of days into the period and generally gets worse with age. The reasons for it are not known, but some relief, for the women it afflicts and the men who keep company with them, is ardently sought.
Since the mid-1980s, some researchers have suggested that caffeine use throughout the cycle may aggravate PMS. One of the first studies to provide solid evidence for this idea was conducted by Heinke Bonnlander, with results published in 1990 in the
American Journal of Public Health.
The study considered almost nine hundred women to find connections between diet and PMS, including an assessment of caffeine intake from all sources.
7
Women who drank eight to ten cups a day of coffee, tea, or cola were seven times more likely to have PMS than women who had no caffeine. Those who drank even one eight-ounce glass of a beverage containing caffeine were 50 percent more likely to suffer from PMS than women who drank none. Bonn-lander concluded that there was a dose-related correlation between caffeine intake and the severity of PMS. As she puts it, “The more caffeine you have, the more severe PMS appears to be. Some people appear to be quite sensitive to caffeine,” although she advises that more studies are needed to confirm her findings.
A pamphlet issued jointly by
Medical Economics
and Organon Inc., makers of a popular oral contraceptive, Desogen, quotes an excerpt from
The PDR Family Guide to Women’s Health and Prescription Drugs
summarizing caffeine’s purported effect on PMS:
Caffeine is a major culprit of PMS symptoms.... Caffeine can exaggerate PMS-related problems such as anxiety, insomnia, nervousness, and irritability, and it can interfere with carbohydrate metabolism by depleting your body of vitamin B. Reducing your caffeine intake…can provide almost instant relief. In fact, some doctors routinely advise eliminating caffeine from the diet before every menstrual period as a first step in coping with PMS.
8
Caffeine may make PMS worse, but, because PMS is known to be linked to low calcium intake, depletion of the vitamin B complex, drops in serotonin levels, inadequate exercise, and many other factors, simply abstaining from caffeine is unlikely to allieviate all of its symptoms.
Osteoporosis, or abnormal loss of bony tissue, is a common bane of postmenopausal women, frequently resulting in fractures, pain, especially in the back of the neck, and a stooping posture. Because bone mass is primarily calcium, any factor that decreases the amount or absorption of calcium, such as long-term steroid therapy or immobilization, is a risk factor for this
condition. A study by Heaney and Recker asserted a borderline association between caffeine consumption and increased levels of calcium excretion, but not with decreases in calcium absorption efficiency. A later study by Burger-Lux, Heaney, and Stegman, conducted in 1990, examined the effects of a moderate dose of caffeine (400 mg a day) on the calcium economy in healthy premenopausal women. Although the results showed a slight decrease in bone accretion, accelerated bone loss, and calcium pool turnover, the authors concluded that their findings supported the view that “moderate caffeine intake does not belong among factors that increase osteoporosis risk, at least for those women with higher calcium intakes.”
9
The Framingham Study, in evaluating the effects of long-term caffeine use over a twelve-year period, found that even one cup of coffee a day increased the risk of hip fracture, an injury commonly associated with osteoporosis, by almost 70 percent.
10
This dramatic increase of fracture rates is commonly confirmed by practicing orthopedic specialists.
The best recent study of the association of lifetime intake of coffee to bone mineral density of the hip and spine, which considered nearly one thousand postmenopausal women, was conducted by Barett-Connor and reported in
JAMA
in 1994. The bone density of the subjects at the hip and spine was measured by the degree to which they absorbed X-rays. Her study concluded that lifetime caffeinated coffee intake is positively correlated with reduced bone mineral density at both the hip and the spine, and that this correlation was observed independently of age, obesity, years since menopause, or the use of tobacco, estrogen, alcohol, thiazides, and calcium supplements.
11
The same study also found, though, “Bone density did not vary by lifetime coffee intake in women who reported drinking at least one glass of milk per day during most of their adult lives.
12
The authors caution that this includes women who drank considerably more milk than one glass a day. The research also suggests that only milk does the trick: Calcium supplements provided no protection against caffeine-induced bone shrinkage.
13
Whatever effect caffeine has on you when you are young, you should be alert to changes that may occur in these effects as you grow older. In addition, because coffee consumption generally increases between adolescence and middle age, at which time it usually levels off, the effects of caffeine over time may increase accordingly.
Several studies have compared the differences in response to caffeine between older and younger people.
In 1988 Swift and Tiplady examined how the effects of caffeine on psychomotor performance changes with age.
14
A series of tests were administered to twelve subjects; six were eighteen to thirty-seven, and the other six were sixty-five to seventyfive. Both age groups demonstrated clear improvements in performance with caffeine use, but the profiles of these improvements were different in older and younger subjects. In results consistent with other studies of centrally acting drugs, the younger group was improved more on tasks depending on motor speed, while the old folks exhibited more improvement in attention and choice reaction time. Although not statistically dispositive, the data suggested that the elderly, overall, show a greater response to caffeine than the young.
Because the sleep time of people over fifty may be as much as two hours less than that of younger people, additional loss of sleep time, such as can be occasioned by caffeine, can represent a proportionally greater loss.
15
Many older people who have difficulty falling asleep are unaware that their medicines may contain caffeine. For example, Anacin and Excedrin, over-the-counter painkillers, and Darvon, a prescription painkiller, contain doses of caffeine that might keep many people awake. The Iowa 65+Rural Health Study of three thousand people over sixty-five found that 5 percent were using medicines that contained caffeine, and that the ones who were doing so were twice as likely as the others to report problems falling asleep. The same study failed to discover any such correlation between sleep problems and coffee drinking. Perhaps this was because, in contrast with their spotty knowledge about their medications, people are universally aware that coffee contains caffeine, and therefore avoid drinking it in the evening.