The man revealing coffee to Europeans by Anna Buoncristiani
It was the year 1592; Prospero Alpini (also known as "Alpino" or as Prosper Alpinus) mentioned for the first time a very popular beverage in Egypt - the "caova" - in one of his botanical works, by praising its curative usage, and describing the plant seeds which produced the beverage after being roasted.
At that time, nobody in Europe knew of its existence; probably in the same year, a German physician, Leonhard Rauwolf, talked about it too, thus contending for primacy with Alpini.
Both scholars could not certainly imagine the world large-scale usage of that beverage in the following centuries: the coffee beverage seems to be very old, fading away between history and legend.
Around mid of the Fifteenth century, it was probably sipped in Yemen: in his classification, Linnaeus named the plant Coffea arabica after its territory of origins. The usage of coffee gradually became more and more popular among the Arabs, who were not allowed to drink alcoholics.
The Islamic religion also appreciated its property of stimulating the intelligence, the creativity and the imagination, unlike wine, which by contrast produced sleepiness and absent-mindedness.
The habit of drinking coffee then arrived in Cairo, where Alpini knew and tasted it for the first time: he lived there for over three years, working as personal physician for Giorgio Emo, Consul for the Venetian Republic.
Born in Marostica (Vicenza) on 23rd of November 1553, Alpini was initiated into the military career, but he soon abandoned it. As a matter of fact, he preferred to study at the University of Padua, where he obtained a degree in medicine in the year 1578.
After attending a short period of practice at Camposanpiero, near the city of Padua, under a local Government contract, he was asked to become the personal physician of Consul Emo, who was planning to travel to Cairo.
Leaving from Venice on September 1580, they arrived in the Egyptian capital only as late as July of the following year, after being obliged to make a stop in Alexandria, due to the spreading of the Black Death.
During his journey, Alpini took the opportunity of making a stop in Crete too, where he could study the island's vegetal specimen, most of which were described for the first time by him.
After his return from Egypt, he was recruited to work as personal physician by Giovanni Andrea Doria, in the city of Genoa, where he practiced his profession with great success, so as to be considered one of the best doctors.
He returned to Venice in 1590, and he remained there for a period of four years, until he was appointed lecturer for its studies on botany (in particular, on medicinal herbs) at the University of Padua.
In 1591, Alpini wrote - in an essay having the form of a dialogue with his master teacher Melchiorre Guilandino - the work entitled "De medicina Aegyptiorum", one of the first non-European medical studies; in this work, he mainly dealt with the diseases, the hygiene, the prophylaxis, and the treatments of illnesses which he discovered during his stay in Egypt, where Turkish medicine was then practiced. In that country, he also discovered the technique of moxa or moxibustion, spreading its knowledge across Europe.
In the same year in which he wrote "De balsamo dialogus", he mentioned the balsam and the plant producing it, taking to Venice a living example. He thought that this plant came from Egypt, rather than from the Arabian Peninsula.
The origins of the balsam had been debated since the ancient times; after his description, scholars continued to talked about it for almost two centuries, until Guglielmo Le Moine - pupil of Linnaeus – finally backed Alpini's theory.
In 1592, the botanical work "De plantis Aegypti" was published, also written in dialogue form with Guilandino; the work contained pictures of trees and shrubs, both native or cultivated species, used in Egypt to treat diseases; among these species coffee was also described for the first time in Europe, together with the baobab and the banana-tree.
Some descriptions were introduced one century and half later in Linnaeus' works, who paid honour to the Venetian scholar devoting a genre of Zingiberaceae to him, the "Alpinia".
In 1601, another strictly medical work was published, "De praesagienda vita et morte aegrotantium" - the first treatise on semeiotics after Hippocrates and Galen; the work was so largely appreciated that it was published in six editions.
Meanwhile, Alpini was appointed Master of the botanical gardens and the officinal herbs, holding this charge, though continuing to practice as a physician, until his death. In 1612, he published the book "De rhapontico", in which a species of rhubarb was depicted for the first time - the Rhaponticum -, coming from Thrace. Alpini made it take root, and hoped that it could replace the expensive rhubarb imported from Asia.
Probably for the deterioration of his health conditions due to a renal disease caught in Egypt, death arrived when he was 63 years old, on November 23, 1616. He was buried in Padua inside the Church of the Saint.
The treatise entitled "De plantis exoticis" was a posthumous work published by his son, Alpino, also Master of the botanical gardens in Padua. The work described different vegetal species, almost completely new for the natural sciences of those times; those species grow in Crete, Egypt, France, Italy and in the private garden of a Venetian nobleman, Nicolò Contarini, who liked to cultivate vegetal rarities in Camposanpiero.
The work included considerations by the same Alpini about some plants obtained from seeds sent to him from various locations. After Alpini's death, the work entitled "Rerum Aegyptiarum libri quattuor" was also published, including zoological and mineral information, but also ancient usages, traditions and monuments from Egypt, making him not only a man of science, but also a careful observer of all what surrounded him.
Probably for the deterioration of his health conditions due to a renal disease caught in Egypt, death arrived when he was 63 years old, on November 23, 1616. He was buried in Padua inside the Church of the Saint.
The treatise entitled "De plantis exoticis" was a posthumous work published by his son, Alpino, also Master of the botanical gardens in Padua.
The work described different vegetal species, almost completely new for the natural sciences of those times; those species grow in Crete, Egypt, France, Italy and in the private garden of a Venetian nobleman, Nicolò Contarini, who liked to cultivate vegetal rarities in Camposanpiero.
The work included considerations by the same Alpini about some plants obtained from seeds sent to him from various locations. After Alpini's death, the work entitled "Rerum Aegyptiarum libri quattuor" was also published, including zoological and mineral information, but also ancient usages, traditions and monuments from Egypt, making him not only a man of science, but also a careful observer of all what surrounded him.
