the history of caffeine

A little wikipediaing led me to this:

Humans have consumed caffeine since the Stone Age. Early peoples
found that chewing the seeds, bark, or leaves of certain plants had the
effects of easing fatigue, stimulating awareness, and elevating mood.
Only much later was it found that the effect of caffeine was increased
by steeping such plants in hot water. Many cultures have legends that
attribute the discovery of such plants to people living many thousands
of years ago.

The early history of coffee is obscure, but a popular myth traces its
discovery to Ethiopia, where Coffea arabica originates from.
According to this myth, a goatherder named Kaldi observed goats that
became elated and sleepless at night after browsing on coffee shrubs
and, upon trying the berries that the goats had been eating,
experienced the same vitality.

In 1587, Malaye Jaziri compiled a work tracing the history and legal
controversies of coffee, entitled "Umdat al safwa fi hill al-qahwa". In this
work, Jaziri recorded that one Sheikh, Jamal-al-Din al-Dhabhani, mufti
of Aden, was the first to adopt the use of coffee in 1454, and that in the
15th century the Sufis of Yemen routinely used coffee to stay awake
during prayers.

Towards the close of the 16th century, the use of coffee was recorded
by a European resident in Egypt, and about this time it came into
general use in the Near East. The appreciation of coffee as a beverage
in Europe, where it was first known as "Arabian wine," dates from the
17th century. During this time "coffee houses" were established, the
first being opened in Constantinople and Venice. In Britain, the first
coffee houses were opened in London in 1652, at St Michael's Alley,
Cornhill. They soon became popular throughout Western Europe, and
played a significant role in social relations in the 17th and 18th
centuries.