smi/ntrTEs AND ADULTERANTS. 



on it for pure coffee. According to the best authorities, 

 coffee, when pure, is a most valuable ingredient of our 

 food, owing to its agreeable flavor, pleasing odor and 

 refreshing and gently stimulating properties, which, if 

 not absolutely necessary, is at least a most desirable 

 constituent of our daily dietary, and any one that 

 deprives it of its true qualities by adulteration or substi- 

 tution inflicts an injury more or less grave on the public 

 health, because the adulterants are claimed not to be 

 poisonous that is, directly but only indirectly inju- 

 rious. The offense is thought little of, and never pun- 

 ished in this country, with the result that the nefarious 

 practice is rather encouraged than repressed. So that, 

 in considering the many evils of coffee adulteration, 

 we must not overlook the fact that coffee is not 

 only a beverage, but also a drug, antagonistic in 

 action to the alkaloid morphia, as well as to other 

 alkaloids of like nature, so that in cases of poison- 

 ing its adulteration may lead to the failure of med- 

 ical treatment, even to the extent of the loss of life. 



The operation of roasting also tends to make coffee 

 soluble in boiling water, as when Raw coffee is perfectly 

 exhausted by means of boiling water it yields up 25 per 

 cent, which passes into solution, while Roasted coffee, on 

 the other hand, when completely exhausted by means of 

 boiling water, yields up 39 per cent, of soluble matter. 

 These figures appear rather high, as in actually using 

 coffee as a beverage we are not in the habit of making 

 anything like a complete extraction, only some 10 to 12 

 per cent, of the coffee passing into the liquid. From these 

 the facts it will be perceived that the chemical character of 

 coffee provide fairly satisfactory criteria for the recognition 

 of many species of adulteration, the absence of starch alone 

 in genuine coffee offering in itself a character which enables 



