It removes the sensation of fatigue in the muscles, and increases their functional activity; it allays hunger to a limited extent; it strengthens the heart action; it acts as a diuretic, and increases the excretion of urea; it has a mildly sudorific influence; it counteracts nervous exhaustion and stimulates nerve centers. It is used sometimes as a nervine in cases of migraine, and there are many persons who can sustain prolonged mental fatigue and strain from anxiety and worry much better by the use of strong black coffee. In low delirium, or when the nervous system is overcome by the use of narcotics or by excessive hemorrhage, strong black coffee is serviceable to keep the patient from falling into the drowsiness which soon merges into coma. In such cases as much as half a pint of strong black coffee may be injected into the rectum.
Strong coffee with a little lemon juice or brandy is often useful in overcoming a malarial chill or a paroxysm of asthma. It is a useful temporary cardiac stimulant for children suffering collapse.
Dr. Restrepo,[238] of Medellin, Colombia, claims to have cured many cases of chronic malaria and related diseases with infusion of green coffee, after quinine had failed. Wallace[239] states that tincture of green coffee is a natural and efficacious specific for cholera, and that she knows of more than a thousand eases of cholera and diarrhea which have been treated with it without an isolated case of failure. Landanabileo has been quoted as using raw coffee infusion in hepatic and nephritic diseases, venal and hepatic colics, and in diabetes.
In the Civil War, surgeons utilized coffee in allaying malarial fever and other maladies with which they had to contend, often under the most trying conditions, and with severely limited means of combating disease.[240] Its effect is to counteract the depressant action of low and miasmatic atmospheres, opening the secretions which they have checked. Travelers from the colder climes soon find that the fragrant cup of coffee is a corrective to derangements of the liver resulting from climatic conditions.[241]
Dr. Guillasse, of the French Navy, in a paper on typhoid fever, says:
Coffee has given us unhoped for satisfaction, and after having dispensed it we find, to our great surprise, that its action is as prompt as it is decisive. No sooner have our patients taken a few tablespoonfuls of it, than their features become relaxed and they come to their senses. The next day the improvement is such that we are tempted to look upon coffee as a specific against typhoid fever. Under its influence the stupor is dispelled, and the patient arouses from the state of somnolency in which he has been since the invasion of the disease. Soon all the functions take their natural course, and he enters upon convalescence.[242]
Also it has been reported that in extreme cases of yellow fever, coffee has been used most effectively by many physicians as the main reliance after all other well known remedies have been administered and failed.
According to Lorand,[243] the use of coffee in gout is strictly prohibited by Umber and Schittenhelm; but he considered it a mistake absolutely to forbid coffee, as, when a person has good kidneys, the small amount of uric acid furnished by the caffein can readily be eliminated. A curious remedy for gout and rheumatism, the efficacy of which the writer scouts, is said to be[244]—a pint of hot, strong, black coffee, which must be perfectly pure, and seasoned with a teaspoonful of pure black pepper, thoroughly mixed before drinking, and the preparation taken just before going to bed. If this has any value, it is probably purely psychological in its function.
Several writers[245] attribute amblyopia and other affections of the sight to coffee and chicory, without giving much conclusive experimental data. Beer,[246] a Vienna oculist, however, held that the vapor from pure, hot, freshly-made coffee is beneficial to the eyes.
Coffee and caffein are physiologically antagonistic to the common narcotics, nicotine, morphine, opium, alcohol, etc., and are frequently used as antidotes for these poisons. Binz found that dogs that have been stupified with alcohol could be awakened with coffee. It may thus be prescribed for hard drinkers to counteract the baleful excitability produced by alcohol; in fact, many topers taper off after a long debauch with coffee containing small amounts of alcoholic beverages. Considering its ability to counteract the slow intoxication of tobacco, it may be inferred that coffee is indispensable for hard smokers.