Coffee. Coffea arabica.

Related entry: Caffeine

CONSTITUENTS—

Caffeine, volatile oil, Caffeotannic acid, proteid, dextrin, glucose.

PREPARATIONS—

Specific Medicine Coffea. Dose, one to ten minims.

Caffeina Citrata, Citrated Caffein. Dose, three to eight grains.

Caffein. Dose, one to five grains.

Physiological Action—Poisonous doses of coffee or caffeine cause delirium, semi-consciousness, a slow and irregular pulse, cold extremities and cold, clammy perspiration, lowered temperature, anesthesia, cramps, tremors, a reeling gait, convulsions, dimness of vision, increase of urine. The habitual and excessive use of coffee as a beverage causes indigestion, with acidity, cardiac irritability, vertigo, headache, irritability of disposition and despondency.

Therapy—The tincture of coffee made from the unroasted berries is a nerve stimulant and antispasmodic. It increases the heart's action and produces a rise in arterial tension. It is of value in nervous headache, and in vertigo from imperfect circulation in the nerve centers-in cerebral anemia.

Coffee is used as a stimulant to antidote the effects of narcotic poisons. In opium poisoning its effects are prompt and immediate. A strong decoction is prepared and injected within the rectum, if impossible to administer it per orem.

The late Dr. Brodnax, beginning in 1876, used coffee as a stimulant in the debility of slow fevers, especially in protracted pneumonia with feebleness. He found it in every way superior to whiskey.

He observed that new born infants that kept up a whining cry for days always succumbed ultimately from some one cause or other. He took raw coffee beans, ground them and made a strong tea with which he succeeded in curing the condition in every case in which he used it.

The American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy, 1919, was written by Finley Ellingwood, M.D.
It was scanned by Michael Moore for the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine.