But the excellent qualities of chocolate were known not only to the Mexicans and Peruvians, from whom, as a matter of course, the Spaniards acquired a knowledge of its properties; but European nations also acknowledged its virtues.  The Portuguese, French, Germans, and Dutch, considered it an exceedingly valuable article of diet, and Hoffman looked upon it both as a food and a medicine.  In his monograph, entitled Potus Chocolati, he recommends it in all diseases of general weakness, macies, low spirits, and in hypochondrial complaints, and what since his time have been termed nervous diseases.  As one example of the good effects of cacao, he adduces the case of Cardinal Richelieu, who was cured of eramacausis, or a general wasting away of the body, by drinking chocolate.[5] And Edwards informs us that Colonel Montague James—­the first white person born in Jamaica after the occupation of the island by the English—­lived to the great age of 104; and for the last thirty years of his life took scarcely any other food but chocolate.  It is also certain that those who indulge in excesses find their vigor more speedily restored by the alternate use of chocolate and coffee than by any other ingesta; and pigs, goats, and horses, which are fed even on the spoiled berries, are observed to become very speedily fat, and in good condition.

But cacao has not only the property of rapidly restoring the invalid to health, strength, and condition, but a very inconsiderable quantity of it will sustain life for a long period.  The South American Indians perform extraordinary journeys, subsisting, daring these prolonged travels, on an incredibly small quantity of chocolate—­so small, indeed, as to render the accounts of travellers upon the subject almost marvellous.  In this respect it resembles coffee, which also possesses the estimable property of sustaining the powers of life, while it modifies and restrains the passion of hunger.

It is a curious fact, and how far this condition may be connected with its powers of sustenance is worthy of inquiry, that chocolate recently boiled, if the operation be performed in a tin pan, is highly electrical; and this property may be frequently manifested by repeating the process.

Cacao, according to Bridges, “was the favourite staple of the Spanish commerce, trifling as that commerce was; and when the English took possession of the island of Jamaica, it was that which first engaged their attention.  The extensive plantations left by their predecessors, who had made it their principal food and only support, soon, however, began to fail.  They were renewed; but whether it might be from the want of attention, or of information in the new colonists, the plants never succeeded under their management; so that, disgusted with the troublesome and unprofitable cultivation, they soon substituted indigo.”  Yet forests of cacao trees grow wild in Guiana, the Isthmus of Darien, Yucatan, Honduras, Guatemala, Chiapa, and Nicaragua; while in Cuba, St. Domingo, and Jamaica, it was once an indigenous plant.