In Praise of Coffee

An early modern document celebrates the purifying qualities of coffee: Coffee is good for “fat persons whose thickened humors circulate with difficulty.” And, it reduces impurities and generally clears out the system: “it restores the stomach, consumes its superfluous humidity, dissipates wind, dissolves the phlegm of the bowels, where it performs a mild abstersion, and what is most considerable, prevents the fumes from rising to the head and consequently reduces the aches and pains customarily suffered there; finally, it affords strength, vigor, and cleanliness to the animal spirits, without leaving any great impression of heat, even upon the most inured persons who are accustomed to use it.”

In short, “those who take it feel by long experience” that all this is so. I know I do.