Cacao or Cocoa 



33 



Wosscressenzky succeeded in separating the alka- 

 loid theobromine from the beans ; he found that 

 chemically it differed little from caffeine and theine, 

 the active principles of coffee and tea, whence it is 

 that the physiologically stimulating effect of cacao, 

 coffee, and tea is very similar. 



.Those substances which are known in chemistry 

 under the name of alkaloids are often very poisonous. Theine, caffeine, and theobromine act as 

 poisons when they are consumed in large quantities. 



Chocolate is a mixture of cacao with sugar, and as a rule with spices also. Usually one 

 part of cacao is mixed with one part (or \\ part at most) of sugar. Cheap chocolate often 

 contains admixtures of starch, such as corn flour, wheat, rice, or potato starch, etc. ; powdered 

 roasted acorns, chestnuts, earthnuts, chicory, ship biscuits, the ground shells of the beans 

 and other woody substances, and even plaster have been employed as adulterants. In 

 England some brands of cacao contain starch, but this fact is, or should be, stated on the tin, 

 so that it loses the character of adulteration, and, moreover, the price is lowered in proportion. 

 The cacao of some of the most important factories in Holland has been found to contain 

 twenty-nine to thirty per cent, of fat, fourteen to eighteen per cent, of albuminoids, five to nine 

 per cent, of ash, four to five per cent, of water, 06 to 1*5 per cent, of theobromine, the rest 

 consisting of starch. Thus it is seen that the composition varies, but these figures may be 

 taken as the limits which " pure " cacao-powder may not exceed. 



In the preparation of medicines chocolate is often used to disguise the taste of disagree- 

 able drugs. Thus, chocolate is sometimes mixed with quinine, rhubarb, steel preparations, 

 magnesia, calomel, ipecacuanha, santonin (the well-known worm-cakes for children, which are 

 still manufactured in large quantities in some Dutch factories to be exported to China > where 

 children seem to be very much plagued with ascarids), castor-oil, etc., and tabloids or cakes 

 are made of these mixtures, containing certain quantities of these drugs. 



