This singular specimen of Turkish superstition, in which the Mahometan appears to have encroached on the prerogatives of the Vatican, is taken from a curious book, which, previous to the Gallic revolution, was in the library of the king of France, and presented to Louis the fifteenth, by Said, an ambassador from the Porte to the court of Versailles.
It is called in the title page, Dgihan Numa, that is, a description of the world, and was printed at Constantinople, in seventeen hundred and thirty-one, adorned with plates and illustrated by maps; the author, or rather the compiler, was Keatib Cheleli, a learned doctor of the Turkish law.
"Coffee," says this enlightened mussulman, who shaking off the stupidity and indolence of his countrymen, assumes the character of a medical inquirer, after he had quitted that of an implicit believer, "coffee is a rejoicer of the heart, an enlivener of conversation, a sovereign restorative after the fatigues of study, of labour or of love; its peculiar characteristic is, to comfort the stomach, nourish the nerves, and to protect the frame against the debilitating effects of a hot climate and a fiery atmosphere.
"Taken an hour after dinner, it prevents an accumulation of crudities in the first passages, is an infallible remedy for the horrors of indigestion, and the megrims."
It was not probable that so wholesome and agreeable an article of diet would be long confined to Asia; it is said to have been introduced to the fashionable circles of Paris by Thevenot, in 1669, but had been made use of in London as an exotic luxury before that time.
The first coffee-house opened in the British metropolis, was in George-yard, Lombard-street, by Rosqua, the Greek servant of a Turkey merchant, in the year 1652; its flavour was considered so delicate, and it was thought by the statesmen of those days (no very reputable characters) to promote society and political conversation so much, that a duty of fourpence was laid on every gallon made and sold.
But Anthony Wood earnestly insists, that there was a house, for selling coffee, at Oxford, two years before Rosqua commenced the trade in London; "that those who delighted in novelty, drank it at the sign of the angel, in that university, a house kept by an outlandish Jew."
In another part of his works, he says that Nathaniel Conapius, a native of Crete, and a fugitive from Constantinople, but residing in the year 1648, at Baliol college, Oxford, made, and drank every morning, a drink called coffey, the first ever made use of in that ancient university.
This popular beverage is mentioned in a tract published by judge Rumsey, in 1659, entitled "Organum Salutis, or an instrument to cleanse the stomach; together with divers new experiments on the virtues of tobacco and coffee."
It is observed in this work, by a correspondent of the author, "that apprentices, clerks and others, formerly used to take their morning draught in ale, beer or wine, which, by the dizziness they cause in the brain, make many unfit for business; but that now they may safely play the good fellow, in this wakeful civil drink, for the introduction of which first in London the respect of the whole nation is due to Mr. Muddiford."