When chocolate arrived from the Americas the Spanish posed a crucial question: was chocolate beneficial to one’s health? Health was a central concern for the Spaniards, who were beholden to an outdated and mostly ineffective collection of medical theories that dominated Western medical practice for nearly two millennia.[i] For chocolate to be judged suitable for consumption it would have to fit within the widely accepted theory of humors. Hippocrates (460-377 BC) is credited as the inventor of the humoral theory of disease and nutrition.[ii] According to Hippocrates the body is comprised of four humors including blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.[iii] These humors are derived from the elements, including earth, air, fire, and water.[iv] Each fluid is associated with a different organ, and each is correlated with different physical principles: warm and moist, cold and dry, warm and dry, and cold and moist.[v] Like the Classical Greeks, the Spanish believed one’s bodily and mental health depended on a proper balance among the four bodily humors.
Each food was thought to include warm, cold, moist, and dry principles in varying degrees. However, chocolate’s uniqueness made it difficult to classify. In 1570 Philip II of Spain sent his Royal Physician Francisco Hernández to classify the plants of Mexico as hot, cold, dry, or wet.[vi] From 1572-1577 Hernández resided in Mexico where he studied the plants of New Spain; he later used this knowledge to craft comprehensive descriptions of over 3,000 plant species. Just as the Aztecs interpreted chocolate as cold, Hernández also classified the cacao seed as “temperate in nature” with “cold and humid” qualities.[vii] At the time, “cool” cacao drinks were often consumed in hot weather and to temper fevers.
In his 1591 discourse Problemas y secretos maravillosos de las Indias (Enigmas and Wondrous Secrets of the Indies) Dr. Juan de Cárdenas described plain cacao as a conglomeration of contradictory qualities, including warm and moist, warm and dry, and cold and dry.[viii] Cárdenas identifies three parts to chocolate including a cold, dry, and earthy part, an oily, warm and humid part, and a hot and bitter part.[ix] The cold and dry quality in cacao solids was thought to produce problems such as “anxieties and melancholy fits.”[x] Like Hernández, Cárdenas suggested chocolate drinks sweetened with honey or sugar to cool overheated individuals.[xi]
The flavorings added to chocolate could also be categorized by temperature and were believed to enhance chocolate’s medicinal benefits. For example, Hernández identifies mecaxochitl, from the hoja santa plant’s flower, as a naturally “hot” spice that “warms the stomach” and “combats poisons, alleviates intestinal pains and colics.”[xii]
Cárdenas mentions “hot” native flavors such as hueinacaztli, or “ear flower,” which aids digestion and calms the liver.[xiii] In addition to hueinacaztli and mecaxochitl, Cárdenas also believed vanilla and achiote could counter the harmful effects of cacao.[xiv] Cárdenas cautioned that “green” chocolate harms digestion and causes irregular heartbeats but, once cacao is toasted, ground, and mixed with atole gruel, it can aid the digestive process.[xv] Thus, according to Cárdenas, the addition of native spices and atole could transform raw cacao’s harmful effects into dietary merits. Besides digestion, chocolate was also purported to excite the venereal appetite. Hernández offers a recipe that contains flavorings prized by the Aztecs, including the aforementioned hueinacaztli (“ear flower”), tlilxochitl (“black flower”, or vanilla), and mecaxochitl (“string flower”).[xvi]
As a royal physician and a respected doctor, Francisco Hernández and Juan de Cárdenas gave chocolate the dietary stamp of approval needed to transition the foodstuff from a foreign curiosity into an acceptable and desirable part of Spanish medicine. Over the course of the sixteenth century, the dietary virtues and alleged aphrodisiac qualities of chocolate caught the attention—and tongues—of the health obsessed Spaniards, who welcomed cacao into their diets, where it has remained.
[i] Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate, 3rd ed. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2013), kindle edition location 1699.
[ii] Coe, The True History, kindle edition location 1702.
[iii] Coe, The True History, kindle edition location 1702.
[iv] Maricel Presilla, The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes (New York: Ten Speed Press, 2009), 27.
[v] Presilla,The New Taste, 27.
[vi] Coe, The True History, kindle edition location 1724.
[vii] Coe, The True History, kindle edition location 1727.
[viii] Presilla,The New Taste, 27.
[ix] Coe, The True History, kindle edition location 1749.
[x] Presilla,The New Taste, 27.
[xi] Coe, The True History, kindle edition location 1753.
[xii] Coe, The True History, kindle edition location 1731.
[xiii] Coe, The True History, kindle edition location 1749 to 1753.
[xiv] Presilla,The New Taste, 27.
[xv] Coe, The True History, kindle edition location 1742 to 1745.
[xvi] Coe, The True History, kindle edition location 1270 to 1296.
Works Referenced
Coe, Sophie D., and Michael D. Coe. The True History of Chocolate. 3rd ed. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013.
Graziano, Martha Makra. “Food of the Gods as Mortals’ Medicine: The Uses of Chocolate and Cacao Products.” Pharmacy in History 40, no. 4 (1998): 132-46.
Hernández, Francisco. Nova plantarum, animalium et mineralium mexicanorum historia, 1651. Ink on paper from woodcut, 13.03 cm x 8.46 cm. Original in the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. <http://jcb.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/detail/JCB~1~1~7180~11130004:-top—De-%C3%87o%C3%A7oyatic,-seu-herba-Palm>, accessed 18 February 2015.
Hernández, Francisco. Quatro libros de la naturaleza, y virtudes de las plantas, y animales, 1615. Translated by Francisco Ximenez. Biblioteca Digital de Real Jardin Botánico, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. <http://bibdigital.rjb.csic.es/spa/Libro.php?Libro=4961>, accessed 18 February 2015.
Norton, Marcy. “Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Internalization of Mesoamerican Aesthetics.” The American Historical Review 111, no. 3 (2006): 660-691.
Presilla, Maricel. The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes. New York: Ten Speed Press, 2009.
Wilson, Philip K., and William Jeffrey Hurst. Chocolate as Medicine: A Quest Over the Centuries. Cambridge: The Royal Society of Medicine, 2012.
Chocolate Class 