hing the child, so that the use of coffee during
the nursing period is undesirable on this ground also. Naturally, the
question arises as to whether this arraignment is purely theoretical or
based upon analytical and clinical data.

It is a difficult matter definitely to set an age below which coffee
should not be drunk, as the time of reaching maturity varies with
climate and ancestral origin. Yet, from a theoretical standpoint,
children before or during the adolescent period should be limited to the
use of a rather small amount of tea and coffee as beverages, as their
poise and nerve control have not reached a stage of development
sufficient to warrant the stimulation incident to the consumption of an
appreciable quantity of caffein.

_Coffee Drinking and Longevity_

There are many who would have us believe that the use of coffee is only
a means toward the end of quickly reaching the great beyond; but it is
known that the habitual coffee drinker generally enjoys good health, and
some of the longest-lived people have used it from their earliest youth
without any apparent injury to their health. Nearly every one has an
acquaintance who has lived to a ripe old age despite the use of coffee.
Quoting Metchnikoff[215]:

In some cases centenarians have been much addicted to the drinking
of coffee. The reader will recall Voltaire's reply when his doctor
described the grave harm that comes from the abuse of coffee, which
acts as a real poison. "Well", said Voltaire, "I have been
poisoning myself for nearly eighty years." There are centenarians
who have lived longer than Voltaire and have drunk still more
coffee. Elizabeth Durieux, a native of Savoy, reached the age of
114. Her principal food was coffee, of which she took daily as many
as forty small cups. She was jovial and a boon table companion, and
used black coffee in quantities that would have surprised an Arab.
Her coffee-pot was always on the fire, like the tea-pot in an
English cottage (Lejoncourt, p. 84; Chemin, p. 147).

The entire matter resolves itself into one of individual tolerance,
resistivity, and constitution. Numerous examples of young abstainers who
have died and coffee drinkers who have still lived on can be found, and
_vice versa_, the preponderance of instances being in neither direction.
Bodies of persons killed by accident have been painstakingly examined
for physiological changes attri