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The cultural pharmacology of chocolate

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, Nov, 2004 by Tim Batchelder

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Chocolate in European and Colonial Medicine

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Sixteenth to early 20th century manuscripts in Europe and New Spain discussed the use of cacao in emaciated patients for weight gain, stimulating the nervous systems of exhausted patients, improving digestion and elimination, and stimulating the kidneys, as well as treating anemia, poor appetite, mental fatigue, poor breast milk production, tuberculosis, fever, gout, kidney stones, reduced longevity and low virility. Chocolate paste was used to administer drugs and counter the taste of bitterness. Cacao bark, oil (cacao butter), leaves and flowers were used to treat burns, bowel dysfunction, cuts and skin irritations. Hernandez (1577:304) wrote the first natural history of cacao and noted that larger trees produced seeds that were used for currency while smaller tree's seeds were used for beverages. Hernandez described a medicine called atextli, which was a thin paste made of cacao beans and maize, that could be "compounded" by adding mecaxochitl (Piper sanctum) and tlilxochitl fruits (Vanilla planifolia) used to excite the "venereal appetite" (Hernandez 1577:305). He also mentioned a beverage called chocolatl, made by mixing grains of pochotl and cacahoatl in equal quantities, that had the properties of making the consumer "extraordinarily fat" if used frequently which was prescribed to "thin and weak" patients (Hernandez 1577: 305).

Humoral theory became an important element in chocolate prescription. In 1591 physician Juan de Cardenas complained that un-toasted cacao produced a constipating effect on the stomach, drained menstruation, closed the urinary tracts, blocked the liver and spleen, reduced facial color, weakened digestion, caused shortness of breath and led to fatigue and fainting (Cardenas 1591), yet if cacao was toasted, ground and mixed with atole (ground maize and water), it led to a robust state of health (Cardenas 1591).

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The cultural pharmacology of chocolate

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, Nov, 2004 by Tim Batchelder

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