Cocoa also contains a _volatile oil_, from which it derives its
peculiar and delicious aroma.

Thus _nearly nine-tenths of the cacao-bean may be assimilated by the
digestive organs_, while three-fourths of tea and coffee are thrown
away as waste. For the same bulk, therefore, cocoa is said to yield
thirteen times the nutriment of tea, and four and a half times that of
coffee. Its value as a substitute for mother's milk has already been
alluded to, but may well be emphasized by a quotation from a paper
read before the Surgical Society of Ireland in 1877 by one of its
Fellows, Mr. Faussett:

"Without presuming to pass any judgment on the many artificial
substitutes which, on alleged chemical and scientific
principles, have from time to time been pressed forward under
the notice of the profession and the public to take the place
of mother's milk, I beg to call attention to a very cheap and
simple article which is easily procurable--viz., cocoa, and
which, _when pure and deprived of an excess of fatty matter_,
may safely be relied on, as cocoa in the natural state abounds
in a number of valuable nutritious principles, in fact, in
every material necessary for the growth, development, and
sustenance of the body."

After giving some remarkable cases of children being restored from
"the last stage of exhaustion" by its use, and "continued through the
whole period of infancy," with the effect of their becoming fine,
healthy children, he concluded by saying:

"I beg therefore respectfully to commend cocoa, as an article