The inclusion of coffee in the average dietary is warranted because of its evident worth as an aid to digestion and for its assimilating power, thus earning its characterization as an "adjuvant food."
Action of Coffee on Bacteria
The employment of coffee as an aid to sanitation has been but little considered. Coffee, when freshly roasted and ground, is deodorant, antiseptic, and germicidal, probably due to the empyreumatic products developed during the process of roasting. An infusion of 0.5 percent inhibits the growth of many pathogenic organisms, and those of 10 percent kill anthrax bacteria in three hours, cholera spirilla in four hours, and many other bacteria, including those producing typhoid, in two to six days.[235]
The maintenance of a low rate of contraction of typhoid fever has often been attributed to drinking of coffee instead of water, the action of the coffee being partly due to the bactericidal effect of the caffeol and partly to the boiling of the water before infusion. The stimulating tendency of the caffein to sustain and to "tide over" those of low vitalities is also evidenced.
Use of Coffee in Medicine
Coffee has been employed in medicinal practise as a direct specific, as a preventive, and as an antidote. The United States Dispensatory[236] summarizes the uses of caffein and coffee as follows:
Caffein is a valuable remedy in practical medicine as a cerebral and cardiac stimulant and as a diuretic. In undue somnolence, in nervous headache, in narcotism, also, at times when the exigencies of life require excessively prolonged wakefulness, caffein may be used as the most powerful agent known for producing wakefulness. In a series of experiments, J. Hughes Bennett found that within narrow limits there is a direct physiological antagonism between caffein and morphine. Coffee and caffein in narcotic poisoning are of value as a means of keeping the patient awake, and of stimulating the respiratory centres.
As a cardiac stimulant, caffein may be used in any form of heart failure; the indications for its use are those which call for the employment of digitalis. It is superior to digitalis in never disagreeing with the stomach, in having no distinctive cumulative tendency, and in the promptness of its action. It is pronouncedly inferior to digitalis in the power and certainty of its action, and in the permanence of its influence once asserted. As a diuretic it is superior; it is very valuable in the treatment of cardiac dropsies, and is often useful in chronic Bright's disease when there is no irritation of the kidneys.
On account of its tendency to produce wakefulness, it is usually better to mass the doses early in the day, at least six hours being left between the last dose and the ordinary time for sleep. From eight to fifteen grams (of caffein) may be given in the course of a day in severe cases. If tried, it would probably prove a useful drug in cases of sudden collapse from various causes.
Good effects of coffee are recounted by Thompson.[237]