Coffee and its Effects.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 300, 18 May 1889, Page 4

Coffee and its Effects.

The great virtue of coffee is that it stimulates and refreshes, these properties being due to caffeine. It also contains gum and sugar, fat, acids, casein and wood-fibre. .Like tea, it powerfully increases the respiration, but, unlike it, does not affect its depth. By its use (says Iron) the rate of the pulse is increased, and the action of the skin diminished. It lessens the amount of blood sent to the organs of the body, distends the veins, and contract* the capillaries, thus preventing waste of tissue. It is a mental stimulus of a high order, and one that is liable to great abuse. Carried to excess, it produces abnormal wakefulness, indigestion, acidity, heartburn, tremors, debility, irritability of temper trembling, irregular pulse, a kind of intoxication ending in delirium and great injury to the spinal functions. Unfortunately, there are many coffee tippler* who depend upon it as a drunkard upon a dram. On the other hand, coffee is of sovereign efficacy in tiding over the nervous system in emergencies. Coffee is, also, in its place, an excellent medicine. In typhoid fever its action is frequently prompt and decisive. It is indicated in the early stages before local complications arise. Coffee dispels stupor and lethargy, is an antidote to many kinds of poison, and is valuable in spasmodic asthma, whooping cough, cholera infantum, and Asiatic cholera. It is also excellent as a preventive against infectious and epidemic diseases. In districts rife with malaria and fever the drinking of hot coffee before passing into the open air has enabled persons living in such places escape contagion.