17th century study suggests link between coffee and impotence

In the olden days, alcohol was clearly evil. People even killed Jesus in parables because of it (Luke 20:14). But then, alcohol got all ambiguous and supported even by people who weren't Al Capone. Scientific studies suggested that red wine could prolong your life at the cost of your immortal soul. Before you knew it, study after study said that wine was not the devil's juice and maybe even appropriate in worship services. However, in March 2006, a bold countercultural study said that maybe, just maybe, red wine was evil and without health benefit.

Given that wine might send you to hell and/or not make you live longer, you might think that the solution is simple: coffee. Surely, if we drink coffee, no harm can befall us! We theorize that, with the putrid stench er um odoriferous aromatic emanation of coffee, happiness is ours! After all, coffee helps prevent Parkinson's Disease. Does not coffee offer us a viable alternative, a pou sto from which we stand untroubled and untossed by the winds and waves of wine that seek to drown us in their wetness?

The answer is not so simple. A wise man once said that those who do not know the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat it, and in no case is this so true as in coffee. Centuries ago, coffee was introduced in England, and the results were devastating for British home-life. A study was conducted by 17th century English housewives that suggests that coffee may offer a viable alternative to the rampant wickedness of wine only by posing a grave threat to the existence of humanity--cessation of the cultural mandate, i.e., the making of babies. The 17th century study, "The Women's Petition Against Coffee," can be found here. Here is an excerpt of the study's findings:

"There was a glorious Dispensation ('twas surely in the Golden Age) when Lusty Ladds of seven or eight hundred years old, Got Sons and Daughters; and we have read, how a Prince of Spain was forced to make a Law, that Men should not Repeat the Grand Kindness to their Wives, above NINE times in a night: But Alas! Alas! Those forwards Days are gone, The dull Lubbers want a Spur now, rather than a Bridle: being so far from doing any works of Supererregation that we find them not capable of performing those Devoirs which their Duty, and our Expectations Exact.

"The Occasion of which Insufferable Disaster, after a serious Enquiry, and Discussion of the Point by the Learned of the Faculty, we can Attribute to nothing more than the Excessive use of that Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called COFFEE, which Riffling Nature of her Choicest Treasures, and Drying up the Radical Moisture, has so Eunucht our Husbands, and Crippled our more kind Gallants, that they are become as Impotent, as Age, and as unfruitful as those Desarts whence that unhappy Berry is said to be brought.

"For the continual sipping of this pittiful drink is enough to bewitch Men of two and twenty, and tie up the Codpice-point without a Charm. It renders them that use it as Lean as Famine, as Rivvel'd as Envy, or an old meager Hagg over-ridden by an Incubus. They come from it with nothing moist but their snotty Noses, nothing stiffe but their Joints, nor standing but their Ears: They pretend 'twill keep them Waking, but we find by scurvy Experience, they sleep quietly enough after it."

Sure, this study is not "scientific" in the sense that it was conducted by fancy scientific implements that beep. It was conducted by people who knew what they knew. It was by women who sensed a change, a shudder in the value-laden fabric that is culture, and wanted to save their civilization. Without the making of babies, all civilization and coffee are in vain, and they knew that. A choice between red wine and coffee is no choice at all.