256 
for administration to persons rescued from starvation, or perish- 
ing from intense cold, when spirits given under these conditions 
often prove fatal. It dispels languor, stupor and lethargy, and, 
given sufficiently strong, is the finest specific antidote in cases ot 
poisoning. 
Fresh roasted coffee has proved to be an effective dispeller of 
foul gases, as well as a valuable disinfectant, in the sick room, 
especially when the room or place to be dismfected is near where 
the coffee is being roasted. 
A DESTROYER OF TYPHOID BACILLI. 
Some years ago, when Mr. William Field, the largest coffee 
roaster in Great Britain, whose name I am sure is familiar to 
most of you in the trade, had a factory down in the East End of 
London, there was a virulent outbreak of smallpox in the dis- 
trict, but there was not a single case in any of the houses imme- 
diately surrounding the factory, although there were numerous 
cases at each end of the same street, and in all the other streets 
in the neighborhood. Some six or seven years ago a cargo boat 
went down in the mouth of the Thames, just by the sewage beds. 
The cargo consisted of 100,000 bags of San Paulo coffee. After 
very considerable difficulty the greater bulk of this cargo was 
salved and kiln dried. The Port of London Authorities hearing 
that it was to be put up for public sale in Mincing Lane applied 
to a magistrate to stop delivery, as they were of opinion that the 
coffee must be full of typhoid bacilli, and therefore quite unfit for 
liuman consumption. After an enquiry lasting two or three days, 
the authorities lost the day, as it was conclusively proved that even 
had the coffee become permeated with typhoid bacilli, the process 
of roasting would totally destroy the germs ; a heat of over 200 
centigrade being necessary to roast coffee, and no typhoid germs 
being able to exist in a temperature of over LSO degrees centi- 
grade. 
Further than this, the analyst employed in the case, who, by 
the bye, had only been consulted on the Saturday, the hearing 
commencing on Monday, had taken two test tubes of semi-digested 
food, and to one he added just the same proportion of coffee as 
would be in the stomach, if one took a cup of coffee after a meal. 
He then proceeded to fertilize typhoid bacilli with verv marked 
success in the one tube without the coffee, but he was quite unable 
to do so in the tube with the coffee in it. 
I know that during the time that I lived out in Singapore, which 
as you know is practically on the Equator, it was a very common 
sayins: that if one took a cup of coffee immediately on rising it 
would act as a preventive for malaria or dengue fever, and there 
were a number of men of my acquaintance, who, during a long 
period of years spent out in the Tropics, attributed their excellent 
health to the fact that they had always been temperate and had a 
cup of coffee every morning on rising. 
