Cacaosophy

It took Dr. Henry Stubbe’s The Indian Nectar, or, A discourse concerning chocolata (1662) one hundred and eighty four pages to make the case for one conclusion: chocolate is the new miracle of Europe. In an era desperate for a wonder drug, this essay presents Britain the ultimate cure-all: a chance to reverse the great fall of mankind. Disguised as an academic medical piece, The Indian Nectar is a powerful piece of propaganda for the absorption of chocolate into English cultu

Thomas Gage was one of the first Englishmen in Mesoamerica to document his experiences there, of which he had over a decade’s worth. His chronicle, The English-American, his travail by sea and land, or, A new survey of the West-India's, published in 1648, helped Gage establish himself as an early authority on the subject of Mesoamerican culture, and cacao in particular, for many Englishmen. Even though English translations of Spanish treatises about the New World and chocolat

Chocolate rose to prominence in the medical and scientific world of the mid-seventeenth-century England, as it had in Spain earlier in the century. In fact, the curative properties of chocolate put many current ideas about science into question. In the course of his introductory poem, Wadsworth takes aim at early notions of science, such as alchemy. He compares, the idea peddled by “Paracelsian Crew” that plain metal elements could be converted into valuable elements like gol

In 1640 Captain James Wadsworth translated Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma’s landmark treatise under the title, A Curious Treatise of the Nature and the Quality of Chocolate. Wadsworth, who had never been to the colonies, but had been schooled in Spain, cleverly hid his identity by publishing under the pseudonym Don Diego de Vadesforte. Twelve years later in 1652 when Wadsworth published his second translation, “Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke,” chocolate had been accepted into