32 CACAO OH COCOA. 



that it shall be served out twice or thrice a week to regiments ol 

 Hie lino, and dailv to the seamen on board Her Majesty's ships, and 

 this wise regulation has evinced its salutary effects in the improved 

 health and condition of the men. Indeed, this has been most 

 satisfactorily established in Jamaica among the troops ; and the 

 same may be asserted of the seamen in men of war on the 

 coast. 



But the excellent qualities of chocolate were known not only to 

 the Mexicans and Peruvians, from whom, as a matter of course, 

 the Spaniards acquired a knowledge of its properties ; but 

 European nations also acknowledged its virtues. The Portuguese, 

 French, Germans, and Dutch, considered it an exceedingly valu- 

 able article of diet, and Hoffman looked upon it both as a food and 

 a medicine. In his monograph, entitled Poht* Ghocolati, he recom- 

 mends it in all diseases of general weakness, macies, low spirits, 

 and in hypochondrial complaints, and what since his time have 

 been termed nervous diseases. As one example of the good effects 

 of cacao, he adduces the case of Cardinal Richelieu, who was 

 cured of eramacausis, or a general wasting away of the body, by 

 drinking chocolate.* And Edwards informs us that Colonel 



* Caffeine (the principle of coffee) and thcobromine (the principle of cncao) 

 are the most highly nitrogenised products in nature, as the following aualy si i 

 will show : 



Caffeine, according to Pfaff and Liebig, contains 



Carbon . . . 49.77 I Nitrogm . . . 28.78 



Hydrogen . . 5.33 | Oxygon . . .1(1.12 



T/ieobr omine, according to Woskn seusky, contains 

 Carbon . . . 47.21 I Nitrogen . . . 35.38 



Hydrogen . . 4.53 | Oxygen . . . 12.80 



Of the two, cacao contains the larger quantity of nitrogen; and this chemical 

 fact explains why cacao should be so much more nutritive thin ten, though the 

 principle of tea (theine) is nearly identical with the principle of cacoa tea 

 containing in 100 parts 29.009 of nitrogen. On this subject Liebig has made 

 an observation which I cannot avoid noticing. He says, " We shall never cer- 

 tainly be able to discDver how men were led to the use of the hot infusion of 

 the leaves of a certain shrub (tea), or of a decoction of certain roasted seeds 

 (coffee). Some cause there must be, which would explain how the piacti< e has 

 become a necessary of life to whole nations. 13ut it is surely still more remark- 

 able that the beneficial effects of both plants on the health must be ascribed to 

 me and the same substance, the presence of which in two vegetables, belonging 

 to diti'erent natural families, and the produce of different quarters of the globe, 

 could hardly have presented itself to the boldest imagination. Yet recent re- 

 searches have shown, in such a manner as to exclude all doubt, that caffeine, 

 the peculiar principle of coffee, and theine, that of tea, are in all respects 

 identic il." -(.lutin. (.'ln'in.j pp. 178 9.) We really can see nothing in all this 

 but the manifestation of that instinct which, implanted in us by the Almighty, 

 led the untutored Indian (as we are pleased to call him) to breathe into the 

 nostril of the buffalo or the wild horse, and by that single act to subdue his 

 aiiu r rv rage, or that impelled the first discoverer of combustion to extract fire 

 from the attrition of two pieces of wood. The American Indian, living ei- 

 tirely mi flesh, "discovered for himself in tobacco smoke a means of retarding 

 the change of matter in the tissues of the body, and thereby of making hunger 

 more endurable." (P. 179.) But the wonder 'ceases, when' we reflect that man 

 was endued with certain properties by his Maker which must have been at some 

 remote period, of which we can form no idea, active and manifest the moment 



