3697 — Drinking Coffee
By Editor
Please give your opinion: is it wrong to drink coffee? E. We suppose that our correspondent means the regular sale coffee, like Brazil or Java. Coffee contains a poison called caffein. This acts the same as does the active poison in tea. Taken in large doses it is a powerful drug, and the bad results that come from heavy coffee or tea drinking are caused by the constant partaking of this drug. Why, then, should we use it? We question whether any one has ever been benefited by its use, whether any one can point out the superior health of a coffee drinker, as a coffee drinker. We know there are thousands and thousands who have been injured by drinking coffee, and have been ordered by doctors to abstain from it, and many thousands will witness to the benefit of utterly breaking away from the habit. It would seem as if it were wrong, first, because it is entirely useless; secondly, because of the harm that it does and the active poison which it contains; thirdly, it is money expended for nothing, and worse than nothing, which might be used for a far better purpose. Break away utterly, and if some warm drink is used, take some harmless preparation, such as cereal coffee, or crust coffee, or corn coffee, or what may be better still in many cases, simply hot water. Years ago, when a young man teaching school, the writer sat at a table with a Methodist minister,—a clear-headed, entertaining gentleman, who told of his experience, when he was a boy, of drinking tea, and getting into his mother's tea-canister, of the longings that he had for coffee, and how, when he saw that such things as those were harming him, he stopped there and then. The advice seemed to be good, the counsel wise, and the writer concluded that there was no better place for him to stop the drinking of coffee and tea than right there and then, and he has never regretted it.