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A CHOCOLATE VALENTINEPOSTED BY CIRCULATING NOW ON FEBRUARY 14, 2014 IN COLLECTIONS, RARE BOOKS &JOURNALS | 1 COMMENT

By Michael J. North

Giving chocolate to a loved one on Valentine’s Day to show affection isengrained in modern culture, but there was a time when peoplelooked at chocolate as a medicine. Because of this, the National Libraryof Medicine has a number of old and rare books on chocolate as aremedy for all sorts of disorders.

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1500S 1600S 1700S

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BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS

CHOCOLATE ENGLAND

FOOD FOUR HUMORS

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Poseidon taking chocolate from Mexico to Europe in Chocolata inda by Antonio

Colmenero de Ledesma, 1644.

National Library of Medicine #2326077R

Meso-American civilizations such as the Maya and Aztecs in what aretoday Mexico and Central America invented and cherished a chocolatedrink made of their native cacao plant long before Europeans arrivedin the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Christopher Columbus and hisson Fernando first saw the beans in a canoe during Christopher’sfourth voyage to America in 1501, and conquistador Hernán Cortéspopularized it when he returned with the drink to Spain in 1528. By thelate 1500s, chocolate had become extremely popular amongaristocrats and the imperial court in Spain, and physicians werebeginning to take sides on whether it was healthy or unhealthy.

One challenge relating to foods discovered in the New World was to fitthem into the contemporary European system of health and well-being, the humoral theory, which held that disease was caused by animbalance in the body’s four humors (blood, bile, black bile, andphlegm) and the four qualities of hot, cold, dry and wet. The chocolatebean itself was thought to be cold and dry, so when used medicinally itwas often applied to ailments that were thought to result from an

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Question Moral, 1636

NLM #2376023R

abundance of heat and wetness, like fevers.

The first book devotedentirely to chocolate, andtouting it as a useful drug,was Spanish physicianAntonio Colmenero deLedesma’s Curioso Tratadode la Naturaleza y Calidadde Chocolate (CuriousTreatise on the Nature andQualities of Chocolate),published in Madrid in 1631.He warned that because itwas cold and dry, however,its excessive use couldcause a buildup of blackbile, which could causemelancholy. Others pointedout that the solution was toheat the chocolate and mixit with ingredients like

chilies, anise seeds, or corn flour, depending on the patient’stemperament. Antonio de León Pinelo had a different take onchocolate and believed that drinking it on ecclesiastically prescribedfast days was morally suspect, as he stated at length in his book,Question Moral Si el Chocolate Quebranta el Ayuno Eclesiastico (MoralQuestion on Whether Chocolate Breaks the Ecclesiastical Fast) (Madrid,1636).

English and French physicians soon picked up on chocolate as aremedy as well. Oxford-trained physician Henry Stubbe (1632–1676)wrote that “it chears the Spirits, begets good Blood, and opens all theEmunctories of the body, and passages, by which Nature designs theejectment of some particular Humour” in his book, Indian Nectar, or aDiscourse Concerning Chocolata, published in London in 1662. Britishphysician William Hughes said that chocolate should be used tocombat inflammations of all sorts, including erysipelas, smallpox,tumors, and burns in his book, The American Physitian, or, A Treatise

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of the Roots, Shrubs, Plants, Fruit, Trees, Herbs, &c. Growing in theEnglish Plantations in America, published in London in 1672. He alsoproclaimed the sustaining qualities of chocolate by saying thatthroughout the Americas, all people “take a mornings drink of it; yea,even the meanest servants, before they go forth to work, do take adraught thereof, or else they are hardly able to hold out until eleven aClock.”

French authors took up the subject of chocolate along with two otherexotic beverages that were also taking Europe by storm in the 17thcentury: coffee and tea. Nicolas de Blégny, surgeon to the Queen andphysician to the King of France, recommended it to settle the stomach(when taken with syrup of vanilla), including stopping vomiting anddiarrhea, but also as a remedy for venereal disease in combinationwith a host of other drugs. These remedies were described in his work,Le Bon Usage du Thé, du Caffé et du Chocolat pour la Preservation &pour la Guérison des Maladies (The Proper Use of Tea, Coffee andChocolate to Preserve Health and Cure Illnesses), printed in Paris in1687, in which he included illustrations of the cacao plant, the bean’spreparation, and even the “moulinets” used to stir the chocolate drinkto make it frothy.

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A recent acquisition by the NLM suggests that chocolate was still atopic of discussion among trained medics into the early 1800s. JosephUrreta wrote his academic dissertation in Lima, Peru, as a requirementto receive his medical degree in 1804 with the title, Sub Torrida ZonaDe Genitibus, Potio Indica Vulgo Chocolate, Saluberrima (Is the IndianBeverage Known as Chocolate Very Healthy for People Born in theTropics?). Urreta’s dissertation advisor, Hipólito Unanue, was the mostnoted Peruvian physician of the day and later served as Peru’s Finance

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Minister in 1824 after the country’s independence from Spain.

In the 1700s and 1800s, manufacturers discovered the art of creatingsolid chocolate. And in the 1860s Richard Cadbury, of the notedEnglish chocolate-producing family, first put chocolates into heart-shaped boxes for Valentine’s Day and so associated it with the holidayand with the heart.

The National Library of Medicine has a large collection of books andarticles relating to chocolate and its relation to human health. To learnmore about them, please feel free to contact us athmdref@mail.nih.gov.

Michael J. North is the Head of Rare Books and EarlyManuscripts in the History of Medicine Division at theNational Library of Medicine.

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