There were also detractors of coffee, but they always remained in the minority. Many blamed him for the death of French Minister Colbert, who died of stomach cancer. Goethe sinned at his usual coffee with milk as the cause of his chronic melancholy and anxiety attacks. Coffee was also blamed for the fact that, according to Levin, it caused “a state of extreme cerebral agitation, which begins to manifest itself in noticeable talkativeness, sometimes accompanied by an accelerated association of ideas. In a cafe, you can sometimes see politicians pouring a cup of black coffee and a cup of inspiration from this abuse of “deep wisdom” about all the events on earth. ”

In the propensity to extreme riot after drinking coffee clearly lies the reason for some decrees against this product, issued in Europe in 1511. Prince Waldeck was the initiator of the first version of the drug-informing program, when he offered a reward of 10 thalers to anyone who would report to the authorities about coffee drinkers. Even the servants were rewarded if they reported about their masters praising their coffee. However, in 1777, the authorities of continental Europe recognized the suitability of coffee for use by the “pillars of the society of dominion” – by the clergy and the aristocracy. The punishment for drinking coffee by members of less privileged classes was, as a rule, public beating with a cane followed by a fine.

And of course, many people once suspected coffee that it causes impotence.

It has often been argued that drinking coffee reduces sexual excitability and causes infertility. Although it is just fables, in former times they believed in it. Olearius states in the story of his travels that the Persians drink the “hot, black water of Chawae”, the property of which is “to sterilize men and destroy the desires of the flesh”. One sultan so carried away coffee that he began to get tired of his wife. The latter once saw how the stallion was castrated and stated that it would be better to give this animal coffee, then it would be in the same condition as her husband. The princess Elizabeth of Charlotte Orleans, the mother of the dissolute regent Philip II, wrote to her sister: “Protestant priests do not need coffee as much as clergymen are not allowed to marry, and they have to remain chaste … I am surprised that so many people like coffee, although he is bitter and he has a bad taste. In my opinion, its taste is exactly like unclean breath. ”

Research doctor Rauwolf from Augsburg, who later discovered the first tranquilizer, the plant extract “rauwolfia,” found that coffee was long established and widely sold in Asia Minor and Persia when he visited this area in the mid-1570s. Messages similar to those of Rauwolf soon made coffee a kind of “fad”. Coffee was brought to Paris in 1643, and after 30 years in the city there were already over 250 coffee shops. In the years immediately preceding the French Revolution, there were already almost 2,000 coffee houses. If indefatigable chatter is the mother of revolution, then coffee and coffee houses are her midwife.