Transcriber’s Notes
Texts printed in italics, bold face and small capitals have been
transcribed between _underscores_, =equal signs= and as ALL CAPITALS
respectively.
More Transcriber’s Notes may be found at the end of this text.
[Illustration: COFFEE TREE AND BERRIES.]
COFFEE
--ITS--
HISTORY,
CLASSIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION
--BY--
JOSEPH M. WALSH,
AUTHOR OF
“TEA: ITS HISTORY AND MYSTERY.”
THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.,
PHILADELPHIA,
CHICAGO, TORONTO.
COPYRIGHTED, 1894,
BY
JOSEPH M. WALSH.
_All Rights Reserved._
CHAPTER I.
EARLY HISTORY.
The gigantic extent to which the production and consumption of Coffee
has been carried of late years, the vast number of hands employed
in its cultivation and preparation for market, including the great
quantity of shipping necessary for its transportation, and the enormous
amount of capital invested in its production and trade, naturally
invest the commodity, not only from a commercial but also from a moral
and social standpoint, with great importance, creating as it does
an industry of almost fabulous proportions and capital, rendering
it second to no other article of food or drink in the world. The
early history of Coffee, however, like that of Tea, is involved in
considerable obscurity, the almost total absence of any historical
fact being only compensated for by an unusual profusion of legendary
and conjectural statements, or by purely mythical stories. As far
as can be ascertained, it was not known to the ancients, although
one writer claims that it is mentioned in the Bible, making the bold
assertion that the potion offered to King David on a certain occasion,
at the hands of the fair Abigail, to calm the temper of the excited
monarch, must have been Coffee, basing his argument on the untenable
grounds that the beverage, whatever it may have been, was prepared from
_something roasted_. Yet no mention of the plant or its product is to
be found among the Egyptians in the time of the Pharaohs, although
their trade at their period, as in the present, lay up the valley of
the Nile toward Berber, its reputed birthplace. It was unknown to the
Greeks and Romans in any form, and though claimed to have been in use
among the Arabs at a very remote time, no reference is made to it by
Mohamet or his followers up to the seventh century. No account of its
use is to be found during the first Moslem invasion of southern Europe
by Abdulrahman in the ninth century, although large quantities of the
commodity were captured in their camp before Vienna during their second
invasion of eastern Europe in the seventeenth century, and it is not
even alluded to by any of the writers who accompanied the Crusaders
into Syria during the thirteenth century.
To the Ethiopians its use is said to have been known from time
immemorial, and that the plant and its virtues were first discovered
in that country is now generally admitted by all authorities on
the subject. The first human beings who appear to have used the
Coffee-berry in any form being the semi-savage tribes inhabiting higher
Ethiopia, to which country the Coffee-plant is indigenous, and where it
is to be found at the present time, growing abundantly both in a wild
and cultivated state. Bruce, in his Travels to Discover the Source of
the Nile, published in 1678, informs us that “The Gallæ is a wandering
nation of Africa, who, in their incursions into Abyssinia, are obliged
to traverse immense deserts, and being desirous of falling on the towns
and villages of that country without warning, carry nothing to eat with
them but the berries of the Coffee tree _roasted_ and _pulverized_,
which they mix with grease to a certain consistency that will permit of
its being rolled into masses about the size of billiard balls and then
put in leathern bags until required for use. One of these balls they
claim will support them for a whole day, when on a marauding incursion
or in active war, better than a loaf of bread or a meal of meat,
because it cheers their spirits as well as feeds them.”
From Ethiopia, the Coffee-plant is claimed to have been introduced
into Abyssinia as early as A. D. 875, while, according to Lagrenie,
Coffee has been known and used in Abyssinia, from the very earliest
times, quoting the Abbé Raynal, a missionary to that country in the
latter part of the sixteenth century, to that effect, stating that “he
procured some of the berries from cultivated plants, and made a trial
of them, finding them larger, rather longer and quite as fragrant as
those obtained from Arabia.” From Abyssinia it was evidently first
introduced into Arabia, but at what period of the world’s history,
or under what circumstances is also lost in doubt. Tradition--never
at a loss for some marvelous story--ascribes its first discovery in
the latter country to a Dervish, who in the year 1275 was driven
out of Moka, pursued and surrounded by his enemies in the adjacent
mountains. In the extremity of hunger he is said to have gathered some
Coffee-berries and eaten them, then, steeping some of the parched
berries in some water to allay his thirst, he accidentally discovered
their agreeable flavor and nutritious properties. While another Arabian
legend attributes its first discovery as an alimentary infusion in
that country to a Mollah named Chadeley, who on being informed by a
goat-herd of the peculiar and exciting effect produced on his goats,
whenever they happened to browse on the leaves and fruit of a certain
kind of tree, resolved to test their virtues on his monks, with whom
it is related he had considerable difficulty in keeping awake during
their nocturnal devotions. Preparing an infusion from the berries of
the plant indicated, he served it to them, the experiment proving a
complete success; the dervishes taking eagerly thereafter to the new
and exciting beverage. While, according to an Arabian manuscript,
now to be found in the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, the use of
Coffee was known in Arabia as early as the thirteenth century. This
coffee-colored document states that “a certain Mufti of Aden, on his
return from a journey to Persia, about the middle of the fifteenth
century, brought back with him some _roasted_ beans of Coffee.” While
in an old treatise upon Coffee, published in 1566 by an Arabian sheikh,
it is stated that the first knowledge of Coffee and its use was brought
from Abyssinia to Arabia about the beginning of the fifteenth century
by a learned and pious mollah named Djmaleddin Abou Elfager. According
to this document, the use of Coffee as a beverage was prevalent among
the Abyssinians from the most remote times, and that in Arabia, when
first introduced, it only supplanted a preparation made from the leaves
of the Celastrus in that country. The introduction and use of the
beverage by the Mufti gave reputation to the practice, his example soon
rendering the new luxury popular among his countrymen, “first among
lawyers and professional men, then with students and those who learned
reading, the custom eventually spreading to artisans and others who
worked in the night, and finally by travelers, who journeyed in the
night to avoid the heat of the day.” In a short time it was declared
in Aden “that this liquor purified the blood, by a gentle agitation,
dissipated the ill condition of the stomach and aroused the spirits.”
As a result of this high extolation it was quickly adopted by those
who had no occasion to keep awake at night, and in a brief space of
time, says M. Galland, “the whole inhabitants of Aden became inveterate
coffee-drinkers.” Its peculiar property of dissipating drowsiness
and preventing sleep was taken advantage of in connection with the
prolonged religious services of the Mahometans, and its use as a
devotional anti-soporific stirred up a fierce opposition on the part
of the strictly orthodox and conservative section of the priesthood.
Coffee being held by them to be an intoxicant beverage, and therefore
prohibited by the Koran, and the dreadful penalties of an outraged
sacred law were held over the heads of all who became addicted to its
use in any form. But notwithstanding the threats of divine retribution,
and though all manner of devices were adopted in order to check its
growth, the coffee-drinking habit spread rapidly among the Arabian
Mahometans, and the growth of coffee, as well as its use as a national
beverage, became as inseparably associated with Arabia as tea has with
China.
From Aden, the use of coffee extended to Mecca, Medina and other cities
and towns of Arabia, the knowledge and taste for it rapidly spreading
outwards from that country to Syria and Persia. Public coffee-houses
being everywhere established, also in many of the other countries in
western Asia, affording, according to one authority, “a lounge for the
idle and a relaxation for the man of business, where the politician
retailed the news of the state; the poet recited his verses, and the
Mollahs delivered their sermons to the frequenters.” But the mania for
coffee becoming so great about this period, particularly in Syria, that
an effort was made by authority of the government to check, if not to
entirely suppress, the further growth of its consumption among the
inhabitants, on the alleged ground of “its intoxicating properties,”
but in reality because of its use leading to social and festive
gatherings, incompatible with the strictness and teaching of the
Mahometan religion. From Syria the use of the “benign potation,” as it
was then termed, reached Cairo about 1510, being received with equal
avidity in that city, so much so that in that year its indiscriminate
use was prohibited on religious grounds, also by Khaine Beg, the
then governor of the city. In his proclamation forbidding the use of
coffee, it was assailed by him as “having an inebriating effect, and
of producing inclinations condemned by the Koran.” This edict was,
however, rescinded by his successor, Causin, soon after his assuming
the governorship. But another effort was made to suppress its use in
1523 by the chief priest, Abdallah Ibrahim, who denounced its use in a
sermon delivered in the mosque of Haffanaine, a violent commotion being
produced among the populace, the opposing factions coming to blows over
its use. The governor, Sheikh Obelek, a man wise in his generation and
time, then assembled the mollahs, doctors and others of the opponents
of coffee-drinking at his residence, and after listening patiently to
their tedious harangues against its use, treated them all to a cup of
coffee each, first setting the example by drinking one himself. Then
dismissing them, courteously withdrew from their presence without
uttering a single word. By this prudent conduct the public peace was
soon restored, and coffee was ever afterward allowed to be used in
Cairo.
Coffee continued its progress without further molestation through
Egypt, the beverage being received in Damascus in 1530, and in
Aleppo a few years later, without opposition, becoming known to the
inhabitants of Constantinople for the first time in 1554, in which
year two persons, named Schems and Heken, the former coming from
Damascus, and the latter from Aleppo, opened the first coffee-houses in
that city, where it soon became the favorite drink with all classes,
“the coffee-houses being thronged night and day, the poorer classes
actually begging money in the streets for the sole object of purchasing
coffee.” And in Constantinople, at this time, we are informed that “a
refusal to supply a wife with a specified quantity of coffee per diem
was admitted to be a valid cause for divorce.” But in Constantinople,
as in Cairo, the new habit excited considerable commotion among
the ecclesiastical authorities and political rulers, owing to the
popularity of the coffee-houses having a depressing influence on the
attendance at the mosques, on which account a fierce hostility was
excited among the religious orders against the new beverage. They laid
their grievances before the Sultan, who first prohibited and then
laid a heavy tax upon the coffee-houses, notwithstanding which they
continued to flourish and extend. A similar persecution to that in
Syria and Cairo soon attended its use in the Turkish capital, having
not only to contend there with religious but also with political
opposition, the religious, as usual, predominating in its severity.
The dervishes had the _sagacity_ to discover “that coffee when roasted
became a kind of coal, and coal being one of the substances which their
prophet had declared was not intended by Allah for human food,” they
therefore declaimed against it with unbounded fury. The mufti being of
their party, the coffee-houses were at once closed by a firman of the
Sultan, Amuret III. This prohibition was, however, found impossible
to maintain, as a few years later a more liberal governor succeeding,
he assured the faithful “that _roasted Coffee_ was not _coal_, and
had no relation to it.” The coffee-houses were immediately reopened,
and soon became as much patronized as before. But though religious
superstition thus readily gave way to the seductive influences of
sensitive enjoyment, a submission not at all uncommon, the political
objections were not so easily silenced. The government, first with that
instinctive faculty so natural to all despotic rulers of converting to
their own advantage the tastes and prejudices of their subjects, laid a
heavy tax on the sale and consumption of coffee, from which it derived
an enormous revenue. But the ever-trembling apprehensions of such forms
of government, not satisfied with this restriction, found, or rather
fancied it found, in the coffee-houses resorts for the disaffected
and nurseries of sedition. These “dangerous places” were consequently
regarded with a jealous eye, and again proclaimed against by the edict
of the Sultan. But not being deemed formidable beyond the precincts of
the city, and also being of too much importance to the public revenue,
they were suffered to remain open in all other parts of the empire.
Scruples of conscience and political objections, however, eventually
died out, religious superstition and political opposition being no
longer excited against the use of coffee as a beverage, so far as the
Turkish empire was concerned.
INTRODUCTION INTO EUROPE.
It is likewise very difficult to determine in what year and in what
exact manner coffee was first carried from Constantinople to western
Europe, but it is generally admitted that the Venetians, on account of
the proximity of their dominions and extensive trade with the Levant,
were the first Europeans to become acquainted with it. And it is a
noteworthy fact that the three principal dietical beverages of the
world were introduced into Europe within a few years of each other,
Cocoa being the first of the three which actually appeared there,
having been brought to Spain from South America. Coffee followed,
coming from Arabia, and Tea, the latest of the series, coming from
China by the hands of the Portuguese.
The first authentic mention made of Coffee or its use by a European
is probably that of Rauwolf, a German physician and traveler, upon
his return from an extended tour through Syria, in 1573. The first
scientific account of the plant being that given by Alpinus, an
Italian naturalist, in his _Medicina Egyptorium_, published in Venice
in 1591. Its use as a beverage is first referred to by two English
travelers--Biddulph and Finch--the former, in writing of it in 1603,
stating “that the Turks have for their most common drink Coffee--a
blackish drink made from a kind of pulse-like pease, and called by
them _Coava_.” In 1607 Finch relates that “the people of the island
Socotra have for their best entertainment a China dish called _Cobo_, a
black, bitterish drink, made of a berry very like a bay-berry, brought
from Moka, and supped off hot.” While Pietro Valla, a Venetian, in
a letter written from Constantinople, in 1615, states that upon his
return to Venice “he would bring back with him some coffee which he
believed was a thing heretofore unknown in his country,” and which he
subsequently did. It is also referred to, in 1621, by Burton in his
“Anatomy of Melancholy” as follows: “The Turks have a drink called
Coffee, so named from a berry, black as soot and as bitter, which they
sip up hot, because they find by experience that that kind of drink, so
used, helpeth digestion and promoteth alacrity.” And coffee in a liquid
state is said to have been sold in Rome as early as 1625. Some of the
prepared beans of Coffee were first carried from Turkey to France by
De la Haye, as early as 1644; “not only coffee, but also the proper
apparatus for preparing it.” In 1657 a small quantity was brought to
Paris by Thevenot, its use, however, being confined solely to his own
immediate family and a few friends. Up to this period, however, and
for many years after, it had never been seen and scarcely ever heard
of by the public at large in that country. But in 1660 “several bales
of coffee” were shipped from Alexandria to Marseillaise, and in 1671
the first coffee-house was opened in the latter city near the Exchange,
“where the merchants met to smoke, talk business and divert themselves
with play.” But it was not until the year 1669 that Coffee drinking
became popular in France, though infrequent travelers had brought with
them from the East a few pounds of the then curious berry. In that year
Solieman Aga was sent as Ambassador from Mahomet IV. to the court of
Louis XIV., where he soon became a “lion,” through the splendid and
unique entertainments at which he figured as host. On bended knees, the
black slaves of the Ambassador, arrayed in the most gorgeous Oriental
costumes, presented the choicest Moka, in tiny cups of egg-shell
porcelain, hot, strong and fragrant, poured out on saucers of gold and
silver, placed on embroidered silk napkins fringed with gold bullion,
to the grand dames who fluttered their fans with many grimaces, and
bent their piquant faces--berouged, bepowdered and bepatched--over
the new and steaming beverage. Such was the half-barbaric occasion by
which Coffee first became generally known to that nation, which is now
so largely dependent upon the “brown berry of Arabia.” The Parisians
immediately became quite enthusiastic over it, the aristocracy adopting
it as the fashionable beverage, it being recorded that the daughters
of Louis XIV. had Coffee imported expressly for the use of the royal
household, at a cost of $15,000 yearly.
The first Coffee-house was opened in Paris, in 1672, by an Armenian,
at the fair of St. Germaine. Meeting with considerable success, he
was encouraged to open another at the Quai d’Ecole, where he was
subsequently succeeded by another, but who, owing to a lack of address
and a proper place to serve it in, was soon compelled to relinquish
the business. About 1675 an enterprising Frenchman, Ettienne d’Alep,
fitted up spacious apartments in the Rue des Italienes, with Oriental
magnificence for the purpose of catering to the public taste for
coffee. This Café--as it was called--was the first of these now famous
institutions, was furnished in the most elegant and expensive manner,
ornamented with rich tapestries, mirrors, pictures, divans and costly
lustres, tea and chocolate being also sold in it. This style of
coffee-house multiplied in a very short time in the gay city, and were
regularly frequented by people of fashion, artists, men of letters
and politicians, the Café Procope in particular becoming immortalized
from its being patronized by Voltaire, Molière, Bolieau, Fontaine and
other Encyclopedists, while another, the Café de la Régence, became
the Mecca of chess players. In a brief period these coffee-houses had
increased to nearly three hundred in Paris alone, the Cafés eventually
becoming dangerous rivals to the Cabarets; finally becoming the cradle
of the modern clubs, it being in one of these coffee-houses--the Café
Procope--that Camille Desmoulins was wont to deliver his stirring
addresses. But, as in the East, at first, coffee here again met with
considerable opposition, Madame Sévigné presuming “that coffee and
other poisons would soon go out of fashion.”
The use of coffee as a beverage is claimed to have been known in
England prior to its introduction into France, and by some authorities
even before the return of Thevenot from the East. One account states
that it was first offered for sale there by a Jew named Jacobs at
Oxford, as early as 1640. And according to the journal of Thomas Rugg,
dated September 22, 1651, coffee was then sold in a liquid state at the
“Sultaness Head, a Cophee house by the Royal Exchange, London,” there
being also distinct evidence extant that for some years prior to that
date it was also offered for sale in many other parts of that city.
The first authentic account, however, states that coffee was first
introduced into England by a Turkey merchant named Daniel Edwards, who,
on his return from a trip to Smyrna, brought back with him a quantity
of it, and with it a Greek servant from Ragusa, named Pasquale Rossie,
who understood the Eastern method of roasting and preparing it. Edwards
had it prepared and served every day to his friends and visitors in
true Oriental style, but finding that the novelty began to attract
too many visitors, his house being thronged daily by those anxious to
taste the new beverage, he established Rossie, in company with another
named Bowman, in a tent for its sale in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill,
London, over which Rossie erected a sign with his own portrait, and
subsequently announcing himself to be “the first person who made
and publicly sold Coffee drink in England.” Bowman, later, opened a
coffee-house on his own account on Lombard street, his former partner,
Rossie, going to Holland, where, it is said, he was the first to
introduce coffee in the drink. At this time coffee sold for from twenty
to twenty-five dollars per pound, but soon became cheaper.
In 1657 many other houses were opened in London for the sale of coffee,
an excise tax of eight pence per gallon being paid on it, when made
and sold in the infusion at that time. The same year a newspaper
advertisement appeared, stating that “In Bartholomew Lane on the back
of the old Exchange the drink called _Cophee_ is sold in the morning
and at three o’clock in the afternoon.” The first mention of coffee on
the statute books was in 1660, when a duty of four pence was laid on
every gallon of coffee made and sold, to be paid by the maker thereof,
another particular statute, in 1663, directing that “all coffee-houses
should be licensed at the general quarter sessions of the peace for the
county in which they are kept.” While another advertisement in that
year says of coffee: “It much quickens the spirits, and makes the heart
lightsome, suppresseth the fumes exceedingly, and, therefore, is good
against headache, prevents cough and consumption, and is excellent for
the cure of gout, dropsy, scurvey, hypochondria and the like.”
In London, as in the other cities where Coffee was first introduced,
coffee-houses multiplied rapidly, not only in the capital, but in
all the larger cities of England, there being in 1688, according
to Ray, as many coffee-houses in London alone as in grand Cairo
itself, Coffee becoming a beverage of general consumption throughout
the entire country. Long antedating newspapers, the coffee-houses
became news-centres, where the intelligent men of the times gathered
to learn what was occurring in the literary and political world,
to discuss public affairs, governmental measures, and form public
opinion. Wits and poets, essayists and philosophers, daily gathered
in the coffee-houses of London, during several generations, to quote
from favorite authors. How faithfully they harangued and button-holed
each other in that fashion so common to all ages, and within their
precincts, what fear and folly, what foolishness and wisdom, have been
uttered over steaming cups of Mocha.
Many of these London coffee-houses afterwards became famous as the
resorts of celebrated men. It was at “Will’s Coffee-house,” in Covent
Garden, that Dryden and Addison, Steel and Davenant, Cary and Pope,
met with other luminaries, while others frequented “Buttons”; Garrick
sipping his Mocha at “Paine’s,” in Buchnal Lane. It being at the famous
coffee-houses of “Garraway,” “Coventrie,” and the “St. James,” that
the Whigs of that time “did most congregate,” and if it be proved that
other potations more fiery and deep mingled with those of the Arabian
product, it may be taken for granted that Coffee often supplied the
place of worse beverages, or, at least, mitigated their evil effects,
the “intellectual drink” gaining friends daily among the wits of the
reign of Queen Anne. It was in a London coffee-house that Pope found
the inspiration of “The Rape of the Lock,” if not the “Essay on Man,”
also, an inspiration, which he celebrated in the following lines:--
“From silver spirits the grateful liquors glide,
While China’s earth receives the smoking tide;
At once they gratify their sense and taste,
And frequent cups prolong the rich repast;
Coffee! which makes the politician wise,
And see through all things with half-closed eyes.”
The coffee-houses of London, as in other cities, eventually became
convenient and much frequented resorts of association and acquaintance
where politics, literature and business topics were freely discussed,
and it is also remarkable that the introduction of coffee into England
encountered the same hostility that it was fated to meet with in all
other countries where it was first introduced. Here also it had its
fanatical opponents, numerous pamphlets being published in favor of and
against its use. It was discussed from every point of view, medical,
moral, physical and political, at one time threatening to become a
_causus belli_ between the sexes. The “Women’s petition against coffee”
and the “Men’s answer” to the same have become a matter of history.
Among the men also the new beverage had its opponents, as in 1657 the
“Rainbow Coffee-house” kept by James Farr in Queen’s Temple was reputed
and persecuted by them as “a great nuisance, and a prejudice to the
neighborhood,” and as such was suppressed, but reopened in a short
time afterwards. In 1675 Charles II. for political reasons attempted
to suppress the coffee-houses by a royal proclamation, classing all of
them as “Seminaries of sedition,” and in which it was stated that “they
were the resort of disaffected persons who devised and spread abroad
divers false, malicious and scandalous reports to the defamation of His
Majesty’s Government, the disturbance of the peace and quiet of the
nation.” This proclamation caused so much excitement throughout the
city that it had to be rescinded in a few days on a petition from the
tea and coffee dealers. On the opinion of legal officials being taken
as to the legality of that step, an oracular deliverance was given to
the effect “that the retailing of coffee might be an innocent trade,
but as it was used to nourish sedition, spread lies and scandalize
great men, it might also prove a common nuisance.” Cromwell ordered
them closed again during the Protectorate for somewhat similar reasons,
but having become necessary to the people they could not be put down
for any length of time. But in England also, as in the other countries,
the most effective check on the increase of the consumption of coffee
was found to be a heavy tax, which, while restricting honest trade,
opened up a channel for extensive smuggling operations.
The London coffee-houses, however, soon assumed the additional
character of Taverns also, other liquors being added to the fare,
thereby losing their attraction for the temperately inclined, the Café
or coffee-house proper flourishing only for any length of time in
Paris alone. But while the people of London began to complain that the
company to be found in their coffee-houses was somewhat mixed, those
of the Parisians from the very first continued to be the most elegant
and select places of resort even to the present day. Before their doors
the equipages of the nobility stopped, while ladies of the highest
rank drank their coffee without alighting, and the Salons within were
crowded with nobles, philosophers, poets, artists and litterateurs.
The sale of Coffee in a liquid form is claimed to have been first
introduced to Holland by the aforementioned Rossie in 1664, from whence
its use soon spread throughout Germany and other parts of the continent
of Europe. While to Vienna the Turks themselves first introduced
coffee in 1683, under somewhat singular circumstances. In that year
the Moslems besieged that city with an enormous force, the siege being
raised, as history tells, by the Polish King, John Sobieski, and the
Moslem hordes completely routed. Large quantities of coffee were
found in their deserted camp, and presented to one Kolschutski as a
reward for the heroic services he had rendered during the investment
of the city, and utilized by him in the establishment of the first
Coffee-house in Vienna.
Coffee-houses have been known in the United States from an early period
in its history, but for a long time New Orleans was the only city where
they existed in their true character, the manner being learned from
Paris. Among the American people, however, the beverage has met from
the first with great favor, being at the present time more extensively
used here than in any country of the world, not excepting the countries
of original production.
Thus in a course of a few centuries has a berry, until then entirely
unknown as an article of diet, except to the semi-savage tribes of
Ethiopia and Abyssinia, made its way through the whole civilized world.
In the nations professing the religion of Mahomet it is drunk at all
hours of the day, and during the night by all ranks and classes of the
people, from the Sultan and the Mufti to the merchant, the artisan and
the peasant. While among the nations professing Christianity, by whom
it has been known for a couple of centuries, it is still regarded as a
luxury, but indulged in, more or less, by all classes and conditions of
society. In none of the states of Christendom was its use ever opposed
by religious fanaticism, nor had it to encounter much opposition from
political jealousy, except for a brief period in England, when its use
was interdicted by Charles II. But, like every other innovation which
has occupied the human mind, it could not fail to occasion a difference
of opinion among medical experts, social reformers and similar bodies.
Its history, at the present time, being only valuable as an example
of a commodity for which there is a universal craving amongst mankind
in general, civilized as well as savage, and to illustrate how it has
struggled successfully, and at length triumphantly, over religious
superstition, political opposition, physiological prejudice, fiscal
restrictions, exorbitant taxes, differential duties and an endless
accumulation of antiquated obstructions. Yet, still, in common with
other important necessaries of life, it has never attained to the
natural state of “unrestricted competition.”