Action of Coffee on The Stomach.
In a paper presented to the Society de Biologie (Rev. Med.) M. Leven states that coffee, so far, as is often supposed, from accelerating the digestive process of the stomach, rather tends to impede this. When thirty grammes of coffee, diluted in 150 of water, is given to a dog, which is killed five and a half hours afterward, the stomach is found pale, its mucous surface being anæmic and the vessels of its external membrane contracted. The whole organ exhibits a marked appearance of anæmia. Coffee thus determining anæmia of the mucous membrane, preventing rather than favoring vascular congestion, and of opposing rather than facilitating the secretion of gastric juice, how comes it that the sense of comfort is procured for so many people who are accustomed to take coffee after a meal? A repast, in fact, produces in those whose digestion is torpid, a heaviness of the intellectual faculties, and embarrassment of the power of thinking; and these effects, and the disturbance of the head, are promptly dissipated by the stimulated effect which the coffee produces on the nervous centers, as shown by experiments with casein. Coffee and tea when taken in excess, are a frequent cause of dyspepsia, for the anæmic condition of the mucous membrane being periodically renewed, a permanent state of congestion is at last produced, which constitutes dyspepsia.— Scientific American.