COFFEE. 13 
I appeal, however, to the impartiality of those who drink 
my coffee, all of whom I hope to have on my side. 
So much has already been written about the mental in- 
fluence of tea and coffee upon our modern society and civili- 
zation, that it is useless to dwell on it more particularly here. 
But this is certain, that Anne Boleyn must have risen from 
a breakfast of half-a-pound of bacon and a quart of beer 
(mentioned by her in one of her letters) with very different 
sensations as well as sentiments, from those she would have 
had, if the meal had consisted only of a cup of coffee or tea 
with some bread and butter and an egg. 
I also pass over unnoticed the national economical im- 
portance of coffee, and will merely say a few words on the 
influence which coffee has had on modern warfare. 
In the first Schleswig-Holstein and the last Italian cam- 
paign the introduction of coffee very materially contributed to 
improve the general health of the German and French 
soldier ; and I am assured (by Captain Pfeufer, of the Sanitary 
Commission in the Bavarian Army) that since the use of 
coffee in the Bavarian army as beverage for the men, the 
numbers of soldiers on a march unable to proceed has, 
in comparison with formerly, very considerably diminished, — 
so much so, indeed, that sometimes not a man is ill; and 
this too when the distances have been great and the weather 
unfavourable. 
And Julius Froebel relates (“ Seven Years in Central 
America,” p. 226), that for the men accompanying the great 
trading caravans in Central America, coffee is an indispensable 
necessity : — “ Brandy is only taken as a medicine, but coffee, 
on the contrary, is an indispensable article, and is drunk 
twice a day, and in large quantities. The refreshing and 
strengthening effect of the drink under great toil in heat and 
in cold, in rain or dry, is extraordinary.” 
As is well known the English are masters in the prepara- 
tion of tea. In preparing coffee, the Germans are, so they 
assert, greater adepts. It is certain that more coffee is drunk 
in Germany than tea. 
The German savant especially prefers coffee to tea, which, 
perhaps, is because of his habits and of the different effect of 
the two beverages on the body. 
Tea acts directly on the stomach, whose movements some- 
times can be so much augmented by it, that strong tea, if 
taken fasting, inclines to vomiting’. 
Coffee, on the contrary, furthers the peristaltic movement 
downwards ; and, therefore, the German man of letters, more 
accustomed to a sitting life, looks on a cup of coffee, without 
