Effects of the Use of Coffee

Dr. William M. Lesynsky of New York says: “Coffee, when well prepared, is beyond question one of the ambrosial luxuries of modern life. It would be as wrong to condemn its use indiscriminately as it would be to deny that under certain conditions it is harmful.

“The importation of coffee into the United States amounted in recent years to about 750,000,000 pounds a year. The importations have been increasing disproportionately to the increase in the population of the country. The price of coffee has also gone down steadily. All these things indicate a steadily increasing consumption of coffee which calls for attention from those who have responsibility for the diets of the people.

“Coffee is an antidote to alcohol as far as the nervous system is concerned, and therefore it is not uncommon for the same person to be addicted to the excessive use of both. Coffee is even more dangerous than alcohol, for it is not, like the latter, a nutrient, nor is its effect in excessive use so apparent or so unrespectable. Recognizing the immediate possible consequence of habitual alcoholic indulgence and its demoralizing influence, it is but natural that so many of us prefer to resort to the use of coffee to tide us over certain intellectual emergencies. Furthermore, the intellectual faculties excited to the greatest degree by the use of coffee are the imagination and the memory. It produces an augmentation of the power of attention, a vivacity of thought and conception, increased capacity for physical or mental work and transitory ambitions often beyond the physical or mental capacity of the individual. The use of coffee is, therefore, at the same time a blessing and a danger.

“Unquestionably the morning cup of coffee has had a wholesome and a beneficial effect on a large majority of our adult population. But coffee does not in any sense replace food. Thousands of oversensitive persons, however, complain that the single cup of coffee in the morning induces in them a transitory sensation of well-being, increased rapidity of thought, and the like, which are soon succeeded by depression and indigestion. If a smaller dose, commensurate with the susceptibility of the patient, were taken, the secondary symptoms, which are those that are objectionable, would often fail to appear. The addition of milk and sugar to coffee aggravate the bad effects by encouraging fermentation and indigestion.

“I have seen victims of the coffee habit among. commercial travelers, brokers, merchants, actors, writers, and men connected with the news departments of the daily newspapers. In such cases the victims of the habit follow the course of the victims of the other stimulants and constantly increase the amount of the dose. The symptoms are troubled sleep, loss of appetite and constipation along with nervous depression, frequently taking the form of a fear of approaching trouble.

“In some cases symptoms of chronic coffee poisoning may result from but three or four cupfuls a day. In such cases it is apparent that the patient is not sufficiently nourished. Women are more addicted to the coffee habit than men. In persons not habitual users of coffee the excessive use of coffee may be followed by symptoms which are almost like these of delirium tremens.”

Dr. Norman Bridge of Chicago says: “Coffee drinking is a frequent cause of disease, as shown by the full reports of seven cases which recovered after the use of coffee was discontinued. Dr. Lesynsky holds that the abuse of coffee by trained nurses and literary persons in order to bring about artificial wakefulness, insidiously, if not rapidly leads to various degrees of exhaustion of the cerebro-spinal centers. It is on children that coffee has the most injurious effects. It produces a certain intellectual precocity in children thro overstimulation, and in some cases arrests development.

“I know of two cases where coffee had a decidedly bad effect on children. One of them came under my own observation. It was that of a boy 10 years old, who ate a quarter of an ounce of coffee beans at one time. I was called to attend him. The symptoms were those of active delirium. The youngster’s pupils were widely dilated and there were visual and oral delusions every five or six minutes, the pulse rate went up to 200 a minute, and there were twitchings of the facial muscles and of the feet and hands.”

Phillipsburg Herald, Philipsburg, KS, March 7, 1901

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