Book Excerpts:

Cocoa and Chocolate

Baron von Liebig, one of the best-known writers on dietetics, says:

"It (chocolate) is a perfect food, as wholesome as delicious, a beneficent restorer of exhausted power; but its quality must be good and it must be carefully prepared. 

It is highly nourishing and easily digested, and is fitted to repair wasted strength, preserve health, and prolong life. 

It agrees with dry temperaments and convalescents; with mothers who nurse their children; with those whose occupations oblige them to undergo severe mental strains; with public speakers, and with all those who give to work a portion of the time needed for sleep. 

It soothes both stomach and brain, and for this reason, as well as for others, it is the best friend of those engaged in literary pursuits."

It is well known that Linnæus called the fruit of the cocoa tree theobroma, 'food for the gods.' The cause of this emphatic qualification has been sought, and attributed by some to the fact that he was extravagantly fond of chocolate; by others to his desire to please his confessor; and by others to his gallantry, a queen having first introduced it into France.

"The Spanish ladies of the New World, it is said, carried their love for
chocolate to such a degree that, not content with partaking of it
several times a day, they had it sometimes carried after them to church.

"Time and experience," he says further, "have shown that chocolate,
carefully prepared, is an article of food as wholesome as it is
agreeable; that it is nourishing, easy of digestion, and does not
possess those qualities injurious to beauty with which coffee has been reproached; that it is excellently adapted to persons who are obliged to a great concentration of intellect; in the toils of the pulpit or the bar, and especially to travellers; that it suits the most feeble
stomach; that excellent effects have been produced by it in chronic
complaints, and that it is a last resource in affections of the pylorus.