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Industry: Email Alert RSS FeedThe cultural pharmacology of chocolate
Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, Nov, 2004 by Tim Batchelder
William Hughes' ethnobotany of plants growing in English plantations in America noted chocolate's use in "preventing unnatural fumes ascending to the head" and to cure the "pustules, tumors, or swellings" experienced by "hardy sea-men long kept from a fresh diet" (scurvy?).
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Once ashore, sailors drink chocolate because it "is excellent to drive forth such offensive humors, opening the pores, and causing moderate sweats." Hughes urged readers living in England to drink chocolate, especially persons with "weak constitutions, and thin attenuate bodies." He notes "I think I was never fatter in all my life, than when I was in that praise-worthy Island of Jamaica, partily by the frequent use (of chocolate), neither had I one sick day during the time I was there, which was more than half a year" (Hughes 1672: 147-148). Sylvestre Dufour published an early recipe for a chocolate drink consisting of 700 cacao nuts, and a pound and a half of white sugar, two ounces of cinnamon, 14 grains of Mexican chile pepper, half an ounce of cloves, three straws of vanilla or anise-seed, a filbert size amount of achiote, almonds, and filberts (Dufour 1685: 72-73). Anise-seed was added to neutralize the "coldness" of the cacao. The fattening properties of chocolate are described as due to the hot and moist, buttery properties of chocolate which go to the parts of the body (fat) that is like themselves.
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