I am a coffee lover… I admit it. One day, walking with my wife around Wheaton, we found a quaint coffee shop and sat there to enjoy what ended up being a very good latte. My wife and I love to watch people and just imagine (or maybe try to guess) what they do for a living. I'm sure we are wrong 99% of the time but it is fun to imagine nonetheless. Anyway, that Sunday afternoon, as we sat there enjoying our latte, I came across an interesting book about coffee, which I now regret not asking the owner if I could buy it. The book was about interesting stories related to coffee. As I went through the pages, I found the reproduction of the covers of two controversial documents printed in 1674.
This one was a women's petition against coffee!! You got to love the way the cover of the petition was written (see picture). This famous petition was put forth in 1674 as a protest against the perceived ills of the all-male coffee house culture of England. According to that petition, coffee had turned men impotent, as clearly -and boldly- stated in on of their paragraphs:
"The fame in our apprehensions can consist in nothing more than the brisk activity of our men, who in former ages were justly esteemed the ablest performers in Christendom; but to our unspeakable grief, we find of late a very sensible decay of that true Old English Vigor; our gallants being every way so Frenchified, that they are become mere cock-sparrows, fluttering things that come on sa sa, with a world of fury, but are not able to stand to it, and in the very first charge fall down flat before us".
Fortunately, science has shown that coffee has a number of health benefits.
Men would not stand silent against those accusations, and later that year the men's answer defending coffee was published.
If women are from Venus, men are… well, from Arabica I guess!
You can read more about the history of coffee and the women's petition against coffee here (please note that the text presented in that petition is very explicit, even for that time) and here. A digital version of the men's answer to the women's petition can be found here.
Have a latte... is good for you!
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