Dalla Bona sets up an amusing and ironic list of all the advantages and disadvantages of coffee, reporting all kinds of curiosities, rumors, superstitions and experiments, both scientific and pseudoscientific, but extending his catalog also to drinks such as rosolio or cocoa. Coffee, introduced in Europe by the Venetians in the second half of the sixteenth century, seen as the devil's drink for its appearance and exciting effects by the Muslim and Catholic religious authorities, was once again allowed to the respective religious communities thanks to the approval of Mohammed IV and Pope Clement VIII. Dalla Bona (Perarolo, Cadore, 1712-Padua, 1786), a doctor and professor of medicine in Padua, is known mainly for this dissertation, but he also left valuable texts on scurvy ("Tractatus de scorbuto", 1761) and smallpox ("Theoretical-practical dissertation on the usefulness of bloodletting in smallpox", 1754 and "Exhortation to grafting smallpox", 1769).