II 



according to M. de Gasparin, they could not keep u]> with the 

 Belgian miners in their daily work, though they were much 

 more fully fed, and they had to give up labour m the mines 

 of Charleroi. The diet of the French workmen contained 

 from live to six and a half ounces of nitrogen, while that of 

 the miners of Charleroi contained less than half an ounce of 

 nitrogen: these amounts of nitrogen are held to represent 

 the amount of flesh-forming substances in the respective diets. 

 But the Belgian miners consumed daily in divided portions, 

 morning, noon, and night, two quarts of boiled coffee made 

 from one ounce of ground coifee. After summing up the 

 constituents of their slender diet, M, de Gasparin added 

 " To coifee alone can we ascribe the power of satisfying: them- 

 selves with a diet which children would not bear, and its 

 action is not that of a nutritive substance, for the analysis 

 shows that it does not compose more than a thirty-fifth of the 

 nutritive properties of the food. Coffee, therefore, has other 

 properties, which are very important. Does it aid the di- 

 gestive functions? Does it produce a more complete assimi- 

 lation? or does it, perhaps, retard the nutrition of the organs, 

 which then do not require so great a consumption of mate- 

 rials for repair or maintenance ? In this case coffee does not 

 nourish, but prevents denutrition." 



The sustaining power of coffee thus attributed by the 

 Count de Gasparin to the prevention of denutrition has been 

 accepted by physiologists and authors on pharmacognosy, and. 

 the term anti-metabolic has come into use to express this 

 check to the processes of waste. It will have a bearing on 

 the immediate subject if reference be made here to coca, 

 which is the leaf of the JErythroxylon coca, used by the Pe- 

 ruvian and Bolivian mountaineers as a masticatory for the 

 purpose of sustaining them during the fatigue of mountain 

 climbing. Very full accounts of this agent will be found in 

 Mr. Markham's Travels in Peru in search of cinchona plants. 

 It is most remarkable as a preventer of denutrition, and its 

 alkaloid, cocaine, is now well known as a local anaesthetic 

 and tonic. The kola-nut, it will be found, bears a strong 

 analogy to coca. 



The knowledge which has been gained by long expe- 

 rience of the uses and properties of coffee has a strong in- 

 terest for us at the present moment, as shedding a light on 

 the properties and. qualities of kola as a beverage; for, rea- 

 soning by analogy from what is known of the constituents of 

 the two substances, there can be little doubt that what is true 

 of coffee will in the main be found to be true of kola, It 

 will be profitable, therefore, to consider coffee somewhat fully. 



Very likely it may be said that one need not have 

 travelled so far as Belgium or Paris for an illustration of the 



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