COFFEE. 
(Coffea Arabica L.) 
DR. ALBERT SCHNEIDER, 
Northwestern University School of Pharmacy. 
•'Directly after coffee the band began to play." 
— Greville, Memoirs, June 5, 1831. 
COFFEE is the seed of a small 
evergreen tree or shrub ranging 
from 15 to 25 feet in height. 
The branches are spreading or 
even pendant with opposite short 
petioled leaves, which are ovate, 
smooth, leathery, and dark green. 
The flowers are perfect, fragrant, oc- 
curring in groups of from three to 
seven in the axils of the leaves. The 
corolla is white, the calyx green and 
small. The ovary is green at first, 
changing to yellowish, and finally to 
deep red or purple at maturity. Each 
ovary has two seeds, the so-called 
coffee beans. 
The coffee tree is a native of the 
tropical parts of Africa, in Abyssinia 
and the interior. The Arabians were 
among the first to transport it to their 
native country for the purposes of cul- 
tivation. From Arabia it was soon 
transplanted to other tropical coun- 
tries. 
The name coffee {Kaffee, Ger., Caf- 
feier, Fr.) was supposed to have been 
derived from the Arabian word Kah- 
wah or Cahuah, which referred to the 
drink made from the coffee beans as 
well as to wines. It is now generally 
believed that the word was derived 
from Kaffa, a country of the Abyssin- 
ian highlands where the plant grows 
wild very abundantly. 
From Kaffa the coffee plant found 
its way into Persia about the year 875, 
and still later into Turkey. According 
to popular belief, the drink coffee was 
the invention of the Sheik Omar in 
1258. Others maintain that the drink 
was not known until even a later 
period. The mufti, Gemal Eddin of 
Aden, made a trip to Persia in 1500, 
where he learned the use of coffee as 
a drink, and introduced it into his own 
country for the special purpose of sup- 
plying it to the dervishes to make 
them more enduring in their prayers 
and supplications. In 1511 coffee had 
already become a popular drink in 
Mecca. About this time Chair Beg, 
the governor of Mecca, issued an edict 
proclaiming coffee-drinking injurious 
and making the use of coffee a crime 
against the laws of the Koran. It was 
prophesied that on the day of judg- 
ment the faces of coffee drinkers would 
be blacker than the pot in which the 
coffee was made. As a result of this 
crusade the coffee houses were closed; 
the coffee plantations were destroyed, 
and offenders were treated to the bas- 
tinade or a reversed ride on a donkey. 
The next governor of Mecca again 
opened the coffee houses, and in 1534 
Sultan Soliman opened the first coffee 
houses in Constantinople, which were, 
however, again closed by Sultan Murad 
II., but not for long. In 1624 Vene- 
tian merchants brought large quan- 
tities of coffee into northern Italy. In 
1632 there were 1,000 public coffee 
houses in Cairo. In 1645 coffee-drink- 
ing had already become very common 
in southern Italy. A Greek named 
Pasqua erected the first coffee house 
in London (1652). Coffee houses ap- 
peared in other cities in about the fol- 
lowing order: Marseilles, 1671 ; Paris, 
1672; Vienna, 1683; Niirnburg and 
Regensburg, 1686; Hamburg, 1687; 
Stuttgart, 1712; Berlin, 1721. In 1674 
the ladies of London petitioned the 
government to suppress the coffee 
houses. To discourage the use of 
coffee it was maintained that the drink 
was made from tar, soot, blood of Turks, 
old shoes, old boots, etc. 
These coffee houses were of great 
significance, as may be gathered from 
the rapidity with which they spread 
and the general favor with which they 
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