Chemical Stimulants In The 18th Century

Chemical stimulants like alcohol,nicotine and coffee are all 'psychostimulants' that induce temporary improvements in mental and physical functions. These psychoactive drugs are addictive and they have mood-elevating effects and these may have made some, if not all of them potent drugs of abuse. These with other complex characteristics of these stimulants are major causes of the titanic consumption of these drugs in the 16th and 18th century. The stimulants gained strong believes for medical purposes,cultural believes and social status. As a result of those causes, this stimulants found themselves in abundance in most parts of the world,basically due to mass-production witch results from world expeditions to technological advances that made
The most famous gathering places in the 16th century were the coffeehouses in Islamic lands. This obviously increased the consumption of coffee since many people were going to the coffee houses to drink, talk about politics and generally meet other people. Many coffeehouses doubled in local drug substances, so they provided coffee with smoke and this increased the daily consumption of coffee since smokers metabolize caffeine at a rate 50 percent faster than non-smokers and so they require more cups of coffee to feel the same stimulating effects . Coffee in Europe was considered to have cultural significant and associated with political connection, so people who were drinking coffee and seen in the coffeehouse were considered respectable, this obviously increased its consumption since many people want to be respected. The well known fact that coffee can travel long distances without much detriment, gave the Europeans the advantage to organize production in their own colonies, this made mass production of coffee possible. By 1726 Europe controlled 50 to 70 percent of world bean trade, this monopoly might have broad lot of profit and this money may have been invested in the production of coffee . Due to the high demand of coffee,it is safe to think that nations that produced the substance had to increase slavery to produce the highly demanded stimulant. In the late 17th century, coffee consumption may have increased due to people consuming it with sugar and this increased the possibilities of people having sugar related diseases like diabetes. The increase in daily consumption of the stimulant may have caused a ‘boisterous’ and often violent behaviour which was even accepted and expected in coffeehouses