The Case Against Coffee

The women's petition against coffee : representing to publick consideration the grand inconveniencies accruing to their sex from the excessive use of that drying, enfeebling liquor : presented to the Right Honorable the keepers of the liberty of Venus

Coffee is such a mainstay of our world that it is easy to lose sight of the fact that it wasn't always universally accepted. At the introduction of coffee to London, and the opening of that city's first coffee houses, there were protests against the brew. Here is the text of a 1674 booklet against coffee and it is beyond description.


To the right honorable the keepers of the liberties of Venus; the worshipful court of female-assistants, etc.

The humble petition and address of several thousand of buxome good women, languishing in extremity of want.

Showish that since the reckoned amongst the glories of our native country, to be a paradise for women: the same in our apprehension can consist in nothing more than the brisk activities of our men, who in former ages were justly esteemed the ablest performers in Christendom; but to our unspeakable grief, we find of late a very sensible decay of that true old English vigor; the gallants being every way so Frenchified, that they are become mere cock-sparrows, fluttering things that come on saesa, with a world of fury but are not able to stand to it, and in the very first charge fall down flat before us. Never did men wear greater breeches, or carry less in them of any mettle whatsoever. There was a glorious dispensation ('twas surely in the Golden Age) when Lusty lads of seven or eight hundred years old, got sons and daughters; and we have read, how a prince of Spain was forced to make a law, that men should not repeat the grand kindness to their wives, above nine times in a night: but alas! Alas! Those forwards days are gone, the dull lubbers want a spur now, rather than a bridle: being so far from doing any works of supererogation that we find them not capable of performing those endeavors which their duty, and our expectations exact.

The occasion of which insufferable disaster, after a serious inquiry, and discussion of the point by the learned of the faculty, we can attribute to nothing more than the excessive use of that newfangled, abominable, heathenish liquor called coffee, which riffling nature of her choicest treasures, and drying up the radical moisture, has so eunuched our husbands, and crippled our more kind gallants, that they are become as impotent, as age, and as unfruitful as those deserts whence that unhappy berry is said to be brought.

For the continual sipping of this pitiful drink is enough to bewitch men of two and twenty, and tie up the codpice-point without a charm. It renders them that use it as lean as famine, as revivaled as envy, or an old meager hag over-ridden by an incubus. They come from it with nothing moist but their snotty noses, nothing stiff but their joints, nor standing but their ears: they pretend 'it will keep them waking, but we find by scurvy experience, they sleep quietly enough after it. A betrothed queen might trust herself a bed with one of them, without the nice caution of a sword between them: nor can all the art we use revive them from this lethargy, so unfit they are for action, that like young train-band-men when called upon duty, their ammunition is wanting; peradventure they present, but cannot give fire, or at least do but flash in the pan, instead of doing execution.

Nor let any doating, superstitious Cato's shake their goatish beards, and tax us of immodesty for this declaration, since it is a public grievance, and cries aloud for reformation. Weight and measure, it is well known, should go throughout the world, and there is no torment like famine. Experience witnesses our damage, and necessity (which easily supersedes all the laws of decency) justifies our complaints: for can any woman of sense or spirit endure with patience, that when privileged by legal ceremonies, she approaches the nuptial bed, expecting a man that with sprightly embraces, should answer the vigor of her flames, she on the contrary should only meet a bedful of bones, and hug a meager useless corpse rendered as sapless as a kixe, and dryer than a pumice-stone, by the perpetual fumes of tobacco, and bewitching effects of this most pernicious coffee, where by nature is enfeebled, the off-spring of our mighty ancestors dwindled into a succession of apes and pygmies: and the age of man now crammed into an inch, that was a span.

Nor is this (though more than enough) all the ground of our complaint: for besides, we have reason to apprehend and grow jealous, that men by frequenting these Stygian tap-houses will usurp on our prerogative of tattling, and soon learn to excel us in talkativeness: a quality wherein our sex has ever claimed preeminence: for here like so many frogs in a puddle, they sup muddy water, and murmur insignificant notes till half a dozen of them out-babble an equal number of us at a gossiping, talking all at once in confusion, and running from point to point as insensibly, and as swiftly, as ever the ingenious pole-wheel could run divisions on the base-viol; yet in all their prattle every one abounds in his own sense, as stiffly as a Quaker at the late barbican dispute, and submits to the reasons of no other mortal: so that there being neither moderator nor rules observed, you may as soon fill a quart pot with syllogisms, as profit by their discourses.

Certainly our countrymen's palliates have become as fanatical as their brains; how else is it possible they should apostatize from the good old primitive way of ale-drinking, to run a whoring after such variety of destructive foreign liquors, to trifle away their time, scald their chops, and spend their money, all for a little base, black, thick, nasty, bitter, stinking, nauseous puddle-water: yet (as all witches have their charms) so this ugly Turkish enchantress by certain invisible wires attracts both rich and poor; so that those that have scarce twopence to buy their children bread, must spend a penny each evening in this insipid stuff: nor can we send one of our husbands to call a midwife, or borrow a glister-pipe, but he must stay an hour by the way drinking his two dishes and two pipes.
At these houses (as at the springs in Africa) meet all sorts of animals, whence follows the production of a thousand monster opinions and absurdities; yet for being dangerous to government, we dare be their compurgators, as well knowing them to be too tame and too talkative to make any desperate politicians: for though they may now and then destroy a fleet, or kill ten thousand of the French, more than all the confederates can do, yet this is still in their politic capacities, for by their personal valor they are scarce fit to be of the life-guard to a cherry-tree: and therefore, though they frequently have hot contests about most important subjects; as what color the red sea is of; whether the great Turk be a Lutheran or a Calvinist; who Cain's father in law was, etc. Yet they never fight about them with any other save our weapon, the tongue.

Some of our sots pretend tippling of this boiled soot cures them of being drunk; but we have reason rather to conclude it makes them so, because we find them not able to stand after it: it is at best but a kind of earthling a fox to hunt him more eagerly afterward: a rare method of good-husbandry, to enable a man to be drunk three times a day! Just such a remedy for drunkenness, as the Popes allowing of stews, is a means to prevent fornication: the coffee-house being in truth, only a pimp to the tavern, a relishing soup preparative to a fresh debauch: for when people have swilled themselves with a morning draught of more ale than a brewers horse can carry, hither they come for a penny worth of settle-brain, where they are sure to meet lazy pragmatic companions, that resort here to prattle of news, that they neither understand, nor are concerned in; and after an hours impertinent chat, begin to consider a bottle of claret would do excellent well before dinner; whereupon to the bush they all march together, until every one of them is as drunk as a drum, and then back again to the coffeehouse to drink themselves sober; where three or four dishes a piece, and smoking, makes their throats as dry as Mount Aetna enflamed with brimstone; so that they must away to the next red lattice to quench them with a dozen or two of ale, which at last growing nauseous, one of them begins to extol the blood of the grape, what rare lagoon, and racy canary may be had at the miter: saist thou so? Cries another, let's then go and replenish there? With our earthen vessels: so once more they troop to the sack-shop until they are drunker than before; and then by a retrograde motion, stagger back to sober themselves with coffee: thus like tennis balls between two rackets, the fops, our husbands, are bandied to and fro all day between the coffee-house and tavern, whilst we poor souls sit moping all alone until twelve at night, and when at last they come to bed smoked like a Westphalia hogs-head we have no more comfort of them, than from a shotten herring or a dried bulrush; which forces us to take up this lamentation and sing:

Tom Farthing, Tom Farthing, where hast thou been, Tom Farthing? Twelve a clock e're you come in, two a clock e're you begin, and then at last can do nothing: would make a woman weary, weary, weary, would make a woman weary, etc.

Wherefore the premises considered, and to the end that our just rights may be restored, and all the ancient privileges of our sex preserved inviolable; that our husbands may give us some other testimonies of their being men, besides their beards and wearing of empty pantaloons: that they no more run the hazard of being cuckold by dildos: but returning to the good old strengthening liquors of our forefathers; that natures exchequer may once again be replenished, and a race of lusty hero's begot, able by their achievements, to equal the glories of our ancestors.

We humbly pray, that you, our trusty patrons, would improve your interest, that henceforth the drinking coffee may, on severe penalties, be forbidden to all persons under the age of threescore; and that instead thereof, lusty nappy beer, cock-ale, cordial canaries, restoring malagos, and back-recruiting chocolate be recommended to general use, throughout the Utopian territories.

In hopes of which glorious reformation, your petitioners shall readily prostrate themselves, and ever pray, etc.

FINIS.



I love this. The writing is so awesome. The arguments against coffee, according to this booklet, includes, it makes men gossip worse than women, makes them limp and "Frenchifies" once vigorous men.

But the icing on the cake is that there is a response to this booklet, done in typical British passive-aggressiveness.   

I will translate it in the future, but I can sum it up as, "Nuh-nuh! Girls are stupid! Now, if you'll excuse me, I would like a grande, iced, sugar-free, vanilla latte with soy milk and good day. I said good day!"