Balzac was a wild guy, and prolific. Here's how he worked:
Balzac drove himself relentlessly as a writer, motivated by enormous literary ambition as well as a never-ending string of creditors and endless cups of coffee; as Herbert J. Hunt has written, he engaged in “orgies of work punctuated by orgies of relaxation and pleasure.” When Balzac was working, his working schedule was brutal: He ate a light dinner at 6:00 P.M., then went to bed. At 1:00 A.M. he rose and sat down at his writing table for a seven-hour stretch of work. At 8:00 A.M. he allowed himself a ninety-minute nap; then, from 9:30 to 4:00, he resumed work, drinking cup after cup of black coffee. (According to one estimate, he drank as many as fifty cups a day.) At 4:00 P.M. Balzac took a walk, had a bath, and received visitors until 6:00, when the cycle started all over again. “The days melt in my hands like ice in the sun,” he wrote in 1830. “I’m not living, I’m wearing myself out in a horrible fashion–but whether I die of work or something else, it’s all the same.”[1]
Alexander Hamilton's practice was similar but not extreme. From Chernow's Hamilton, this quote reflects on both his work ethic and superb thinking and writing abilities:
"When he had a serious object to accomplish, his practice was to reflect on it previously. And when he had gone through this labor, he retired to sleep, without regard to the hour of the night, and, having slept six or seven hours, he rose and having taken strong coffee, seated himself at his table, where he would remain six, seven, or eight hours. And the product of his rapid pen required little correction for the press."
Heh, "to reflect on it previously," this sounds like a highly optimized form of hammock-driven development.
I admire this focus quite a lot. For the most part it was sustainable, although at times he nearly wore himself out and his in-laws the Schuylers had to drag him outside more to walk and ride horses to rest his mind and restore his body.
Adults could expect to live longer than that though, because infant mortality skews it lower. If you made it to your 20s back then, you could expect to live into your 70s
I've also heard "50 cups a day" estimated for Voltaire. If true, it probably means something more like 50 shots of espresso, but I'm still skeptical in both cases.
A typical cup of coffee has ~100 to 200 mg of caffeine. Here is what happens when people are dosed with 30,000 mg in one go[1]
It’s not clear just when someone realized that things might have gone a tiny bit wrong, but the story does mention “violent side effects”, which you’d have to think were neurological seizures, and those must have kicked in pretty shortly. The students were hospitalized immediately and put on dialysis, and appear to have recovered with no permanent damage, which is pretty remarkable (one of them has some short-term memory loss). Each of them apparently lost over 20 pounds during the whole thing, which makes me hope that this doesn’t catch on as some sort of idiotic emergency weight loss plan. Being hospitalized near death will take off the pounds, but it’s not recommended. There’s a literature report of a fatality with a 12 gram dose, so I think we can conclude that (1) taking multigram amounts of caffeine is extremely dangerous, and (2) these two students were fortunate to have survived, and without immediate medical care they might well not have.
Yeah, the LD50 of water is maybe ~6-7 L [0]. If ~100 mL / cup, you're approaching that volume of coffee with 50 cups. The small amount of sodium in coffee may help. (Ignoring how fast these are being consumed.)
I'm sure the Voltaire thing is just "the dude drank a lot of coffee."
Depends on body mass obviously, but it's closer to twice that. Also depends on the coffee, whether you're talking traditional 6oz coffee cups or standard English 8oz cups, etc.
I've heard that too (and the associated joke—someone: "Don't you know it's a slow poison?", Voltaire: "It must be very slow.") but have never been able to authenticate either. Anybody have sources?
Thanks for your comment - it (as well as the original link) inspired me to head to Wikipedia and I started reading about Balzac and literary realism and other relevant subjects. I had vaguely heard of Balzac, but never given him much thought and definitely not read any of his novels. I'm now busy reading Father Goriot which is available on Amazon for free (and probably Gutenberg too):
It corrects a lot of typos in the Gutenberg/Amazon edition. It also corrects missing accent marks on French names/words and a bunch of other transcription errors.
Father Goriot is an excellent book, and this translation is very fresh and modern, considering its age.
Balzac drove himself relentlessly as a writer, motivated by enormous literary ambition as well as a never-ending string of creditors and endless cups of coffee; as Herbert J. Hunt has written, he engaged in “orgies of work punctuated by orgies of relaxation and pleasure.” When Balzac was working, his working schedule was brutal: He ate a light dinner at 6:00 P.M., then went to bed. At 1:00 A.M. he rose and sat down at his writing table for a seven-hour stretch of work. At 8:00 A.M. he allowed himself a ninety-minute nap; then, from 9:30 to 4:00, he resumed work, drinking cup after cup of black coffee. (According to one estimate, he drank as many as fifty cups a day.) At 4:00 P.M. Balzac took a walk, had a bath, and received visitors until 6:00, when the cycle started all over again. “The days melt in my hands like ice in the sun,” he wrote in 1830. “I’m not living, I’m wearing myself out in a horrible fashion–but whether I die of work or something else, it’s all the same.”[1]
[1] http://meaningring.com/2015/05/06/daily-rituals-balzac-by-ma...