The art of medicine
Centuries of seeking chocolate’s medicinal benefits
In 1753, the noted nosologist Carl Linnaeus named it Theobroma cacao—“food of the gods”. Indeed, few natural products have been purported to effectively treat such a wide variety of disorders as has chocolate. Chocolate’s medicinal benefits are traceable as far back as Aztec medical practice. There, remedies concocted from the cacao beans, which had formed in the pods produced by the “Chocolate tree”, were used to soothe stomach and intestinal complaints, control childhood diarrhoea, reduce fevers, expel phlegm by provoking cough, reduce the passage of blood in stool, and promote strength before military or sexual conquests. In later eras, chocolate remedies were thought to combat emaciation, decrease “female complaints”, delay hair growth, promote kidney stone expulsion, increase production of breast milk, prolong
longevity, both encourage and prohibit sleep, clean teeth, diminish one’s timidity, and prevent syphilis.
Long before Richard Cadbury first put it in a heart-shaped box for Valentine’s day, in 1861, chocolate was promoted as a libido enhancer. In 1652, Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma’s Chocolate; or, An Indian Drink promises it “Twill make Old Women Young and Fresh; Create New-Motions of the Flesh”. It was even purported to affect fertility. According to M L Lemery’s Treatise on All Sorts of Foods...also of Drinkables (1745), one Dr Munday noted a patient “in a miserable condition” who, after “supping of Chocolate...[was] recovered in a short Time; but what is more extraordinary is, that his Wife in Complacency to her Husband, having also accustomed herself to sup Chocolate with him, bore afterwards several Children, though she was looked upon before not capable of having any”. Although admittedly only snippets from the vast history of chocolate’s delectable timeline, such anecdotes reveal some of the changing ways chocolate’s benefits were accounted for between early modern Europe and our modern worldview.
Chocolate became more widely known to Europeans during the 17th century, and hospital records from early modern Europe reveal chocolate as a regularly stocked ingredient used in prescription compounding. Recipe books and pharmacopoeias suggest specific preparations to achieve chocolate’s desired effect. Typical additives compounded into chocolate medicine included cinnamon, saffron, nutmeg, Indian or Spanish Pepper, aniseed, and vanilla to counteract the bitter tastes; fl our made from cassava, maize, or Indian corn was then mixed with egg yolk
to bind it into a paste that was often dried into hard rolls, cakes, or bricks for easy storage. Portions of these chocolate bricks were later mixed into a beverage which, according to the 18th-century London physician Edward Strother, consisted of “particles truly nutritious and alimentary” that were “very nourishing, cordial and comforting”.
Among England’s chief chocoholics was the physician Henry Stubbs. His 1662 book, The Indian Nectar; or, A Discourse Concerning Chocolata, was designed to help the English reading public overcome common misconceptions about the strength and frequency of using chocolate as a medicine. For example, rather than merely repeating claims of chocolate’s ability to enhance the vital, sacred quality of the blood— claims that had been shrouded in mystery from as far back as Mesoamerican culture—Stubbs reported cases of seemingly respectable witnesses to rhetorically convince physicians and the public of chocolate’s perceived benefits. Other anecdotes of chocolate’s medicinal benefits may also be drawn from accounts by popular figures of the era. For instance, after the festivities to celebrate Charles II’s Coronation, Samuel Pepys noted, “Walked in the morning with my head in a sad takingthrough the last night’s drink, which I am very sorry for; so rose, and went with Mr Creed to drink our morning draught,which he did give me in Chocolate to settle my stomach.”Alongside such positive accounts, others noted that some regular chocolate drinkers just got a bit larger overtime. Philippe Sylvestre Dufour observed in The Manner of Making Coffee, Tea and Chocolate (1685):
The “buttery parts” of the cacao tend to “fatten” people because the “hot ingredients” of medicinal chocolate serve as a type of pipe or conduit…and make it pass by the liver,and the other parts till they arrive at the fleshy parts, where finding a substance which is like and comfortable to them…[they] convert themselves into the substance of the subject[whereby] they augment and fatten it.
Such observations do not, however, seem to have affected the popularity of chocolate. In The Natural History of Chocolate from 1719, D de Quélus notes:
“Before chocolate was known in Europe, good wine was called the milk of old men; but this title is now applied with greater reason to chocolate, hence its use has become so common that it has been perceived that chocolate is with respect to them, what milk is to infants”.
Although chocolate had been consumed as a medical beverage for centuries, in the early 18th century it became closely linked with milk. After his 1687 voyage to Jamaica,Sir Hans Sloane had introduced milk chocolate as the new restorative to the English constitution. The Cadbury brothers later purchased Sloane’s milk chocolate and,viewing it as a nourishing, healthy alternative to alcohol,they promoted it as a healthy “flesh forming substance”.Later, European advertisements of the 19th century provide evidence of medicinal milk chocolate’s enduring reputation. Coenraad J Van Houten refined chocolate into a more digestible form. He mixed the beans with potash to darken their colour, to lighten their flavour, and to improve the powder’s solubility in water or milk. This powder soon became known as cocoa, and Van Houten’s mix was promoted as “The Food Prescribed by Doctors”.Contemporary French promotions advertised their milk chocolate as beneficial to both convalescents and children,particularly in curing “fragile stomachs”.
These advertisements and others promoting the products created by Henri Nestlé and Rodolphe Lindt represent a shift to industrial marketing campaigns about the benefits of chocolate as a nutritious food. In the “anti-germ” eraof the early 20th century, a newly formed company in the USA began promoting chocolate. Milton S Hershey—a Pennsylvania confectioner of Swiss Mennonite ancestry—represented his mass-produced milk chocolate as pure,natural, and nutritional. He advertised chocolate against a back ground of green fields, cows, and wholesome country milk. Milk, fortunately, was white—the colour that the medical community used to represent clean, sterile, sanitary environments as part of public health campaigns.
Just as milk chocolate was deemed to be beneficial, in subsequent years chocolate milk was advertised by manufacturers as a good-tasting restorative drink high in both proteins and carbohydrates. By the mid-20th century, we find an extension of chocolate’s claimed benefits. Manufacturers used advertisements to promote the notion of “chocolatomania” cravings, particular among women. However, chocolate’s rich natural complexity— a complexity that rivals any other food—makes determining the actual physiological source of perceived cravings difficult to ascertain.
Throughout the closing years of the 20th century,such commercial claims for chocolate’s supposed health benefits were increasingly able to draw on a burgeoning scientific interest in chocolate. Research into the health effects of cocoa—some of which is supported by chocolate manufacturers—has yielded much food for thought. Studies have been done, for example, on the effect of plant-derived, saturated stearic acid fats on cholesterol concentrations; whether consumption of chocolate has an effect on the release of phenethylamine, anandamide, or serotonin;and the properties of high-quality dark chocolate, which has high concentration of the stimulant theobromine and is also rich in flavanols. Indeed, some small studies have shown increased concentrations of a particular flavonoid, epicatechin, after chocolate consumption—a substance that promotes antioxidant activity which, in turn, decreases the activity of low-density lipoproteins. Such findings are welcomed by chocolate manufacturers, the medical community, the media, and consumers alike. Controversy remains over the extent to which, despite caloric concerns,chocolate’s beneficial ingredients effectively delay atherosclerosis and arteriosclerosis, inhibit blood platelet activity, stimulate blood flow, and reduce blood pressure. Still, investigators strive to ascertain whether this one-timesnack may also be one of nature’s greatest restorative and curative medicinal agents.
This “food of the gods” that many cultures ennobled as acurative drug, a culinary delight, and even a source of currency for commodity trading has retained its appeal over the centuries. At least on one level, our continued craving to uncover chocolate’s medicinal benefits represents good taste in therapeutic choice.
Philip K Wilson
Department of Humanities,
Penn State College of Medicine,
Hershey,
PA 17033,
USA
