17 



another case, of which I had knowledge, it proved most 

 efficacious in warding off and cutting short attacks of asthma. 

 1 would not hesitate to recommend the kola beverage as 

 being particularly suited to dyspeptics and to asthmatics. In 

 asthma it may be given both in the pure nervous forms and 

 in cardiac asthma, as an adjuvant to other medicinal treat- 

 ment. As ordinary " biliousness" is but a form of stomach 

 derangement, the use of kola beverage is likely to prove of 

 service to those who are subject to this disorder, by pre- 

 venting or diminishing the severity of the attacks. 



Kola beverage, or kola-coffee, may be prepared by 

 selecting the perfectly sound dried nut and roasting it. It 

 may be highly roasted without losing much caffeine, for re- 

 cent experiments by Dr. Paul, of London, have shown that 

 there is very little loss of caffeine in roasting coffee unless 

 the process be carried to an extreme. Uniformity in the 



- size of the seed selected is an object in roasting kola-nut, 

 just as it is in the case of roasting coffee-berries. Unlike 

 coffee, kola -nut is destitute of a fine aroma, and the roasted 

 and ground product is devoid of odour, unless it be a faint 

 smell, which one of my friends has likened to the odour of 

 spigelia, and another called it a "drug-like" odour; this how- 

 ever, soon passes off, and the substance is left without smell. 

 The ground kola-coffee must be used in smaller quantity 

 than coffee, otherwise it proves too strong a cerebral stimu- 

 lant. The recognised standard for the strength of coffee is 

 that advocated by Dr. Parkes in his work on Hygiene; a 

 cup of coffee being made from half an ounce of coffee in- 

 fused with about three ounces of boiling water; this consti- 

 tutes strong or black coffee, and may be diluted with an 

 equal quantity of milk to constitute cafe-au-lait. Kola- 

 coffee made about half or even one-third this strength is 

 quite a sufficient stimulant as a morning beverage. Tastes, 

 however, will always vary, and there is room for a choice of 

 strength according to preference. Persons unaccustomed to 

 it should always remember its high stimulant power on the 

 brain, and that it is not always suitable to be taken late at 

 night, particularly if it be made strong. My first indulgence 

 in a cup of kola-coffee late in the evening cost me a night of 

 wakefulness, and imparted an active and rapidly changing 

 flow of ideas, with an inclination to walking about and a 

 readiness for exertion rather than a disposition to repose. 

 It quite exceeded my experiences of midnight coffee in 

 student days. I had simply taken my kola too strong, too 



i much of it, and too late. 



Prepared in the way I have indicated, by infusion or by 

 boiling, (for both these methods are applicable in the case of 

 kola-coffee) the beverage has a rich, dark brown appear- 



