History of Caffeine

The drinking of tea and coffee introduced a new drug, caffeine, which has not naturally available in temperate climates, into Western civilization in the 17th century.

With the development of worldwide trade routes during the 17th and 18th centuries, caffeinated products such as coffee, tea, guarana, coca, and mate spread rapidly from their indigenous environment of the parts of the world.

It is the most common stimulant drug in used for centuries, yet it wasn’t until the 1800s that scientists purified it and gave it a name.

Caffeine was first purified by German chemist named Johann Freidlieb Ferdinand Runge. With the aid of chromatography technique he purified a a crystalline white powder with a bitter taste from coffee beans.

Its chemical structure was identified in 1875. Caffeine was isolated from tea in 1827, five years after first isolated from coffee.

The plants contain the methylxanthines have been used to make popular beverages since ancient times.

In the late 1800s, entrepreneurs began selling flavored carbonated beverages with added caffeine. Original claims for promoting used of these products appealed directly to the stimulant pharmacology of caffeine.
History of Caffeine