Coffee prevents the plague!

It's true; I drink coffee regularly, and have never once had the plague. Nor have any of my coffee-drinking co-workers.

Fascinating what used to be seen as medicinal. Coffee, of course, was originally seen as medicinal, then as a bad habit... Not as condemnation-worthy as opium, but bad enough.

For sheer oddness, though, my personal favorite is probably powdered mummy, taken to thicken the blood. (And darn it, ever since the FDA crackdown on fake mummy, my blood's felt thinner.)