32 



CACAO OR COCOA. 



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

 the line, and daily 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 Periivians, from whom, as a matter of course, 

 the Spaniards acquired a knowledge of its properties ; but 

 European nations also acknowledged its virtues. The Portuguese, 

 Prench, Grermans, and Dutch, considered it an exceedingly valu- 

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

 a medicine. In his monograph, entitled Fotus Chocolati, 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 Eichelieu, 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 theobromine (the principle of cacao) 

 are the most highly nitrogenised products in nature, as the following analysis 

 will show : — ■ 



Caffeine^ according to Pfaff and Liebig, contains — 



Carbon . . . 49.77 i Nitrogen . . .28.78 



Hydrogen . . 5.33 | Oxygen . . . 16.12 



Theohromine^ according to "Woskreseusky, contains — 



Carbon . . . 47.21 j Xitrogen . . . 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 th^n tea, 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 discover 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 practice has 

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

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

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

 to different 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 

 identical. " — {Anim. Che in., -p-p. 178-9.) AVe 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 

 angry rage, or that impelled the first discoverer of combustion to extract fire 

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

 tirely on 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 wbich we can form no idea, active and manifest the moment 



