Coffee is a _purgative_——a very agreeable form of breakfast pill——but, as with all purgative medicines, an increasing dose is necessary, and its final effect is constipation, with no end of possibilities as a result of the retention of waste matters in the blood. Constipation, however produced, is a _predisposing_ cause, and the continuance of the habits that have produced and now maintain it constitutes a sufficient _exciting_ cause, of such diseases as neuralgia, rheumatism, erysipelas, fevers of various sorts (including scarlet fever and “head cold,”) and, with the aid of sewer gas _insufficiently diluted with outdoor air_——by means of ventilation——diphtheria, or any of the zymotic “diseases.” Worst of all, those more terrible maladies (because more permanent and enduring, and unrecognized as symptoms of disease), as nervousness, peevishness, irritability, and general unreasonableness, are due, in great measure, to impoverishment of the blood; the nerves are insufficiently nourished, and the brain is “set on edge” by the poisoned circulation. Professor Prescott makes this very interesting remark with regard to the chemistry of coffee and tea: “But the change of guanine into theine is easily accomplished. It is perfectly practicable to bring guano material to the laboratory, and send away the same atomic elements transformed into the snow-white, silky crystals of theine. Given only sufficient demand for the pure stimulant principle of tea and coffee, and a market high enough above the cost of its vegetable sources, and it might then safely be predicted that not many months would elapse before companies with thousands of capital stock would engage successfully in the chemical manufacture of theine from guano. Then, very likely, rival companies would establish the claim to manufacture a still purer article from certain of the waste substances of the world——articles more accessible than guano.” As to the nutritive properties of coffee, although the food constituents of the _berry_ are considerable in quantity, yet so deficient are they in digestibility that, in the infusion especially, it is more than doubtful if they are of advantage in supporting life, under any circumstances; indeed, I have no doubt that the poisonous effects of the alkaloid and tannin far outweigh any gain from the nutrients. At any rate, he would be a bold man, indeed, and I doubt not a defeated one in the end, who should attempt to imitate Mr. John Griscomb’s fast of forty-five days (which was attended by no discomfort even), substituting coffee infusion for pure water.