A BROAD-SIDE AGAINST COFFEE; OR, THE MARRIAGE OF THE TURK
_Coffee_, a kind of _Turkish Renegade_, Has late a match with _Christian water_ made; At first between them happen'd a Demur, Yet joyn'd they were, but not without great _stir_;
_Coffee_ was cold as _Earth, Water_ as _Thames_, And stood in need of recommending Flames;
_Coffee_ so brown as berry does appear, Too swarthy for a Nymph so fair, so clear:
A Coachman was the first (here) _Coffee_ made, And ever since the rest _drive on_ the trade; _Me no good Engalash_! and sure enough, He plaid the Quack to salve his Stygian stuff; _Ver boon for de stomach, de Cough, de Ptisick_ And I believe him, for it looks like Physick. _Coffee_ a crust is charkt into a coal, The smell and taste of the Mock _China_ bowl; Where huff and puff, they labour out their lungs, Lest _Dives_-like they should bewail their tongues. And yet they tell ye that it will not burn, Though on the Jury Blisters you return; Whose furious heat does make the water rise, And still through the Alembicks of your eyes. Dread and desire, ye fall to't snap by snap, As hungry Dogs do scalding porrige lap, But to cure Drunkards it has got great Fame; _Posset_ or _Porrige_, will't not do the same? Confusion huddles all into one Scene, Like _Noah's_ Ark, the clean and the unclean. But now, alas! the Drench has credit got, And he's no Gentleman that drinks it not; That such a _Dwarf_ should rise to such a stature! But Custom is but a remove from Nature. A _little_ Dish, and a _large_ Coffee-house, What is it, but a _Mountain_ and a _Mouse_?
And so it came to pass that coffee history repeated itself in England. Many good people became convinced that coffee was a dangerous drink. The tirades against the beverage in that far-off time sound not unlike the advertising patter employed by some of our present-day coffee-substitute manufacturers. It was even ridiculed by being referred to as "ninny broth" and "Turkey gruel."
_A brief description of the excellent vertues of that sober and wholesome drink called coffee_ appeared in 1674 and proved an able and dignified answer to the attacks that had preceded it. That same year, for the first time in history, the sexes divided in a coffee controversy, and there was issued _The Women's Petition against Coffee, representing to public consideration the grand inconveniences accruing to their sex from the excessive use of the drying and enfeebling Liquor_, in which the ladies, who had not been accorded the freedom of the coffee houses in England, as was the custom in France, Germany, Italy, and other countries on the Continent, complained that coffee made men as "unfruitful as the deserts where that unhappy berry is said to be bought." Besides the more serious complaint that the whole race was in danger of extinction, it was urged that "on a domestic message a husband would stop by the way to drink a couple of cups of coffee."