My day, like that of many millions of other people, starts with a cup of hot, sweet coffee. The caffeine in it lifts the mood as it sweeps away early-morning inertia. The sugar taken with the coffee is an admirable way of correcting any hypo-glycaemia. I repeat the dose when I reach my office.

Is the small luxury of drinking coffee evidence of an addiction to caffeine, popularly supposed to be a noxious chemical and regularly attacked in the health and beauty columns of magazines? Or is it, as I prefer to believe, regularly but falsely maligned, and not only harmless but, when taken in moderate amounts, beneficial to someone’s health?

Most doctors have been brought up to believe, as the health and beauty correspondents do, that the world would be a better place without coffee drinking. Doctors mutter darkly that coffee could be responsible for an increased risk of a fast heart rate, other cardiac arrhythmias, high blood pressure and heart attacks. They even hint that it could cause cancers, including cancer of the pancreas.

Few of those who preach against coffee have studied the evidence. If they did, they might realise that many of the stories that have circulated about coffee since it was discovered 1,300 years ago in the Middle East are myths. Recent research has suggested that for most people it is clinically harmless, and for many medically helpful.

The latest benefit attributed to coffee is its ability to reduce the levels of uric acids in the blood, cutting the number of attacks of gout that periodically afflict some people. This conclusion resulted from work at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Canadian Arthritis Research Centre at the University of British Columbia.

The evidence that research teams have collected and analysed on the benefits of coffee for gout sufferers has been published in the latest issue of Arthritis and Rheumatism. The conclusion was that drinking four or more cups of coffee a day dramatically reduces the risk of gout in men.

The study was based on the analysis of people drawn from the 50,000 health professionals whose medical condition has been carefully followed for the past 12 years.

Other university work includes a smaller study of 757 patients who had been found to be suffering from gout. Researchers assessed the risk of having attacks of acute gout and related this to the amount of coffee drunk. The likelihood of an attack of gout was 40 per cent lower in those patients who drank four to five cups of coffee, but reduced by a dramatic 59 per cent for those who drank six or more cups daily.

Nearly all the myths surrounding coffee that have terrified its drinkers over the years have been exploded. For example, a former patient of mine told me this week that his father had forbidden him to have coffee as it caused liver cirrhosis. An old belief, but absolute nonsense. Six years ago Dr Arthur Klatsky, a well-known American research physician, and other investigators showed that coffee, but no other caffeine-based drink, tended to delay the onset of alcoholic and nonalcoholic cirrhosis.

Eight years ago research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicated that coffee drinking reduced the incidence of gallstones and gall bladder disease. More recently, it has also been shown to lessen the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes.

Harvard studies have cleared coffee of the frequent charge that it increases the chances of strokes and heart attacks. Now there is convincing evidence that it certainly has no adverse effect on the heart attack or stroke rate, but shows a slight benefit. However, the advantage of taking it as a cardio-protective drug is so small that it is safer to describe its influence as neutral.

Nor has there ever been any evidence that coffee causes cancer. Its influence on rectal cancer has been debated for many years but the current opinion is if it has one, it is likely to be beneficial.

Is there such a thing as too much coffee? It is probably safer to take coffee and all other pharmacologically active substances in moderation, but three or four cups are unlikely to hurt anyone. As it increases alertness and sensitivity, it would be as well to avoid it altogether if you have insomnia, or a heart rate that behaves erratically when stimulated in other ways.

Pregnant women should also take it in strict moderation. Everyone else should enjoy their early-morning coffee. It’s not a vice but a pleasure. As they drink it, they should remember that it even reduces the suicide rate in women.