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That said, aside from an equally feisty introduction,
Vades-forte/Wadsworth claims none of the writing or the
knowledge therein as his own. By rendering Colmenero’s
expertise under a pseudonym that gave him credibility as a
translator of Spanish, Wadsworth preserved the exotic flavor
of the drink he offered his countrymen. While the treatise
itself takes up foreign knowledge, Wadsworth’s original
introductions directly address their new audience in familiar
terms. His introduction to the 1652 edition pitches the drink
as a cure-all for British consumers, promising help to “every
Individuall Man and Woman, Learn’d, or Unlearn’d, Honest,
or Dishonest”, who could afford chocolate’s “reasonable
rates”. The benefits of ingesting chocolate swirl inventively
around the promises of bodily repair and vigor.
rate (n.): tasa
As much as Wadsworth’s translation threat (n.):
amenaza
anchored its knowledge in Colmenero’s
first-hand medical testimony, the litany of diseases that make
the case for taking the chocolate cure in the preface speak
directly to threats to the body in England around 1650. In a
century of dirty cities, plagues (which peaked in 1665), and
terrible infant mortality rates, the medical need for chocolate
must have seemed acute. Chocolate’s seemingly endless
applications provided a brilliant marketing strategy for
anyone who stood to benefit from the trade. At the same
time, creating a British dependence on the drug served
to justify the country’s colonial presence in the Caribbean,
something scholars of the transatlantic conquest have not
failed to point out.

By the time the French came around
to capitalizing on the chocolate drug
two decades later, exoticism and
fashionability were more important
branding criteria for chocolate than its
medical application. Circa 1670, self-
described French merchant-tradesman
Philippe Sylvestre Dufour published

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