The Dark Humor of Coffee History: Sweden’s King Who Tried to Prove Coffee Was Deadly
Coffee has long been one of the most important threads running through European history. But what many people don’t realize is that coffee also has its own “dark history.” When coffee first arrived in Europe in the late 16th century, it immediately raised alarm within the Christian church. This black beverage from the “infidel” Muslim world was once condemned as “the devil’s drink.” By the 18th century, this suspicion was still very much alive in Sweden. King Gustav III firmly believed that coffee was harmful to the human body and regarded it as a kind of poison. In order to prove coffee’s dangers, he organized what would later become one of the most infamous human experiments in coffee history. Although the scientific validity of this experiment is highly questionable by modern standards, it nevertheless revealed something remarkable: as early as the 18th century, humans had already discovered that coffee was, in fact, non-toxic. To understand this story, we first need some histo...