An experiment with coffee and tea

Most of the foods which we eat today were at one time or another not known to men. One by one they were introduced and became a part of the everyday diet. Very often the person who was the first to try these foods, however, had to be a person of courage. Who, for example, ate the first oyster? Who had the courage to eat the first mushrooms?

When tea and coffee were first introduced into Europe in the eighteenth century, there were many arguments for and against their use. Some people claimed that coffee and tea were poison, and they said that, if drunk over long periods of time, coffee and tea would kill a person. In Sweden, the king, Gustav III decided to find out whether these claims were true or false. It happened that there were two brothers who were in prison at the time; they were twins and were exactly alike in every way. They had also been condemned to die. The king decided to let them live if they agreed to do the following: one of the men was supposed to drink several cups of tea each day; the other man was supposed to drink several cups of coffee each day.

Both brothers lived many years without any problems of any kind. At last, one of the brothers, the one who had to drink tea every day, died at the age of eighty-three. The other died a few years later. Everyone, however, seemed to be well satisfied with the way the experiment had turned out, for Sweden today is one of the countries of the world where much tea and coffee are drunk.