1. Forget 5-Hour Energy. The original pick-me-up may have come from the nomadic Oromo of Ethiopia, who made energy bars from ground coffee beans and animal fat sometime in the first millennium.
2. Around A.D. 1000, Arab traders brought coffee beans home from Africa and started boiling them into a drink they called qahwa. Translation: “that which prevents sleep.”
3. Fast-forward to the 1930s, when German physician Max Gerson began promoting daily coffee enemas to detoxify the liver, stimulate metabolism, and cure cancers.