4. A woman, aet.27, whose catamenia, expected in the beginning of the month, had not appeared, imagined she must be pregnant, and with the view of producing miscarriage took on August 10 at one draught a decoction of 250 grms. of fresh – burnt coffee in 500 grms. water, which had been boiled for about 10 morning. As within a 1/4 hour. She got very ill the doctor was called in. He found her seated on the soda, she would not lie down; face pale, with expression of extreme anxiety. She would not lie down; face pale, with expression of extreme anxiety. She wept and moaned that she must die, all hope was gone, she could not breathe, her chest felt tightly constricted. She clutched hold of the furniture and the bystanders convulsively, changed her place constantly tried to rise up, but fell back helplessly. A peculiar trembling in limbs, especially hands, that sometimes amounted to twitchings, as in chorea, so that she could not hold a spoon or a glass. She knew the doctor and also the cause of her sufferings, but was not quite right in her intellect. The following day she had but an imperfect recollection of what happened the previous day. She could not give intelligent answer. Pupils moderately dilated, sensible to light. Forehead felt cold. Respiration laboured, short and quick, 24 to 30 per morning. Complained of violent palpitation of heart. The heart’s impulse shook the thoracic wall over a large space, the sounds were loud and sharp; pulse 112, hard tense. After 1 hour violent diarrhoea set in, which lasted till night. Almost every 1/2 hour there was thin watery stool with extreme tenesmus. Frequent urging to urinate, about every 1/4 hours. Quantity of urine only slightly increased, sp. gr. 1014, colour bright yellow. Morphia was given, and late in evening she got some rest and a short sleep, but the rest of the night she was very restless, generally awake, but she had short spells of half-sleep which were disturbed by vivid dreams or visions. Next day she was very exhausted and unsteady on her limbs she had besides vertigo, frontal headache, and inclination to vomit. The diarrhoea and urging to urinate were gone. The pulse had its usual character, only it intermitted every 6-10 beats. Next day quite well. The menses came on without suffering only a few day later than expected. (CURSCHMANN, Deutsche Klinik, 1873, 377.)
5. The daily use of coffee for breakfast produced within a few weeks in a man of forty – five, somewhat predisposed to piles and of late unused to coffee, a discharge of exceedingly bright blood every morning, with the regular stool. It also increased very perceptibly his myopia, and caused the same affection on his daughter of thirteen years. All symptoms disappeared in a few days, after leaving off this stimulant. (F. G. OEHME, N. A. f. of
hours, N. S., iii, 418.)
6. Dr. WOOD state that he was for years troubled with frequently recurring nervous headache, which at times incapacitated him for the performance of any active duty. “Scarcely a day passed without some uneasiness or deranged sensations in the head, such as roaring, buzzing and singing in the ears, sounds as of pounding, or bell-ringing in the distance, swimming or vertiginous feeling, muscae volitantes, etc.; and I never walked in the street without the fear of sudden attack of these symptoms, which, when they came, took away all mental energy. It occurred to me that a single cup of coffee which I took daily in the morning and to which I had reduced myself from the necessity of escaping dyspeptic sufferings, which a free use of it had occasioned, might be the cause of these distressing phenomena; I abandoned the habitual use of it, substituting black tea for coffee; and from two weeks after that time up to the present, a period of many years, I have been almost entirely free from the symptoms referred to. ” (Pharm. and The rap., sub voce.)
7. Dr. LEGRAND DE SAULLE, in a series of articles on “agoraphobia, ” assigns the immoderate use of coffee as one of the causes of this neuropathic condition. We have had to attend a literary man affected with the symptoms of this malady, as described by the above named author; the general health was
otherwise perfect, and there was no other psychical disturbance. We attributed the trouble to excessive use of cafe noir, and also of venery, and a similar effect having been observed from too great devotion to tobacco – we prescribed tabacum 6, with complete success. (L’ Hom. Milit., 1879, p. 34.)
8. a. When a person unaccustomed to the use of coffee drinks a moderate quantity, or one accustomed to its use an immoderate one, for the first hours the consciousness of existence becomes more lively. He gets a circumscribed redness of the cheeks; he forehead and palms become warm and moist; there is a general agreeable yet uneasy sense of warmth; there occurs a kind of voluptuous palpitation, somewhat resembling that occurring from great joy the veins of the hands swell. Externally also he is warmer to the feel than natural, but this warmth never comes to the length of heat, even after large quantity (it sooner turns into general perspiration); none ever become burning hot. Presence of mind, attention, sympathy, become more active than in the healthy natural state. All external objects appear to excite a feeling of pleasure; they take on, if I may be allowed the expression, a joyous varnish and if the quantity of coffee taken was very great, they assume an almost over-pleasing lustre.
8 b. If the quantity taken be immoderately great, and the frame very excitable and quite unused to coffee, there occurs a semilateral headache, from the upper part of the parietal bone to the base of the brain. The cerebral membranes also of this side seem to be painfully sensitive. The hands and feet become cold; on brow and palms cold sweat appears. The disposition becomes irritable and intolerant; no one can do anything to please. The patient is anxious and trembling, restless, weeps almost without cause, or smiles almost involuntarily. After a few hours, sleep comes on, out of which he occasionally starts up in affright. I have seen this rare state two or three times.
8 c. In an individual of very irritable temperament, or who has already been enervated by the copious use of coffee and a sedentary life, the effects I have mentioned appear in a still more prominent form. An excessive sensitiveness, or a gaiety greatly disproportionate to the object of it; tenderness almost partaking of a convulsive character; an inordinate sorrowfulness; a wit that is not altogether under the restraints of reason; an excessive distortion of the features approaching to caricature,- under circumstances where a mere smile, a little joke, a slight perplexity, a moderate expression of grief or sympathy, would have sufficed. Even the muscles of the rest of the body exhibit an unnatural excessive activity; and the ideas and the pictures of the fancy flow in rapid succession and in a continuous stream before the seat of imagination and sensation in the brain-an artificially accelerated, artificially exalted life.
8 d. When the first transient effect of coffee has after a few hour departed there follows gradually the opposite state-the secondary action. There gradually creeps on a yawning drowsiness and greater inactivity than in the ordinary state; the movements of the body become more difficult than formerly; all the excessive gaiety of the previous hours changes into obtuseness of the senses. If, during the first hours after drinking the coffee, digestion and defecation were hastened now the flatus becomes painfully incarcerated in the intestines, and the expulsion of he faeces slower and more difficult than before. If in the first hours an agreeable warmth pervaded the frame, this factitious vital spark now gradually becomes extinguished, a shivering sensation is felt, the hands and feet become cold. All external agents appear less agreeable than before. More ill – humoured than ordinarily, they are more given to peevishness. The sexual passion, which was excited by the coffee in the first hours, becomes all the colder and more obtuse. A kind of speedily satiated bulimia takes the place of the healthy appetite, and yet eating and drinking oppress the stomach more than previously. They have greater difficulty in getting to sleep than formerly, the sleep is heavier than it used to be, and on awaking they are more sleepy, more discouraged, more melancholy than usual. All these evils are rapidly driven away by a renewed application to this hurtful palliative; a new artificial life commence, only it has a somewhat shorter duration than the first time, and then the repetition of the beverage becomes ever the more frequently necessary, or it must always be made stronger in order to enable it again to excite life for a few hours.
8 e. It would be no easy task for me to indicate all the maladies that under the names of debility, nervous affections, and chronic diseases prevail among coffee – drinkers, enervating humanity and causing degeneration of mind and body. [*We have not, save for what follows, cited those which Hahnemann does indicate, as the connection between them and coffee-drinking is dubious.-EDS*]. The palliative agreeable sensation which it diffuses for some hours through the finest fibres leaves behind it, as a secondary action, an extraordinary susceptibility to painful sensations, which always becomes greater and greater the longer, the oftener, the stronger, and the larger quantity in which the coffee is drunk. Very slight things (that would make scarcely any impression on a healthy person unaccustomed to the beverage) cause in the coffee-drinking lady megrim; a frequent, often intolerable toothache, which comes on chiefly at night with redness of face and at length swelling of the cheek; also a painful drawing and tearing in different parts of the body, especially the limbs-not in the joints, but between them, and more in the flesh or cellular tissue than in the bones, unattended by swelling or other abnormal appearance, and with scarcely any tenderness to touch. Apprehensiveness and flying heat are her daily complaints, and nervous semilateral headache her property. This last occurs in the morning, immediately or soon after waking, and increases gradually. The pain is almost intolerable, often of a burning character; the scalp is also intolerably sensitive, and painful on the least touch. Body and mind seem both to be insufferably sensitive. Apparently destitute of all strength, the suffers seek a solitary and if possible dark spot, where, in order to avoid the daylight, they pass the time with closed eyes in a kind of waking slumber, usually on a couch raised at the back or in an armchair, quite motionless. Every movement, every noise, increases their pains. They avoid speaking themselves and listening to the conversation of others. Their body is cooler than usual, though without rigor; the hands and feet in particular are very cold. Everything is distasteful to them, but chiefly eating and drinking, for an incessant nausea hinders them from taking anything. In bad cases the nausea amounts to vomiting of mucus, but the headache is seldom alleviated thereby. The bowels are constipated. This headache almost never goes off until evening; in very bad cases I have seen it last 36 hours., so that it only disappeared the following evening. It recurs at undetermined times, every two, three, four weeks, &c. It comes on without any exciting cause, quite unexpectedly; even the night previous the patient seldom feels any premonitory signs of the headache that is to come on the next m. I have never met with it excepting among regular coffee-drinkers. (HAHNEMANN, Lesser Writings, p.453, et seq.
Hughes was a great writer and a scholar. He actively cooperated with Dr. T.F. Allen to compile his 'Encyclopedia' and rendered immeasurable aid to Dr. Dudgeon in translating Hahnemann's 'Materia Medica Pura' into English. In 1889 he was appointed an Editor of the 'British Homoeopathic Journal' and continued in that capacity until his demise. In 1876, Dr. Hughes was appointed as the Permanent Secretary of the Organization of the International Congress of Homoeopathy Physicians in Philadelphia. He also presided over the International Congress in London.