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Voltaire famously drank something like 50 cups of coffee a day. When someone told him it was a slow poison, he replied, "It must be very slow." That's the stor
by gruseom 13y ago
Voltaire famously drank something like 50 cups of coffee a day. When someone told him it was a slow poison, he replied, "It must be very slow."
That's the story at least. Don't know if it's true.
- pdenya 13y ago30 not 50 but yea, still a crazy amount. "Voltaire was also known to have been an advocate for coffee, as he was purported to have drunk it at least 30 times per day. It has been suggested that high amounts of caffeine acted as a mental stimulant to his creativity." - wikipedia
- gruseom 13y agoIf you follow Wikipedia's source for that, here is what it actually says: In France, meanwhile, Voltaire was reputedly downing between 50 and 72 cups of coffee a day Encyclopedia authors shouldn't cut numbers in half. In any case, the reported number varies wildly and I've never been able to track down a source for it. They're probably all made up.
- mbell 13y agoIt seems to me that the measurement here comes into question. What is a cup now vs what is a cup then? At what brew strength? etc.
- anthuswilliams 13y agoWhen I first heard this claim, it was about the French author Honoré de Balzac. This claim about Voltaire makes me doubt both. I'm not saying that it's impossible to have two famous French writers habitually drinking an atypically obscene amount of coffee, just that it makes the claim seem more dubious.
- vidarh 13y agoSounds exaggerated, unless he had insane tolerance levels or the coffee was very weak. Typically you count ca. 70mg for a cup of coffee, though of course it varies a lot with type. If we assume 50mg, that's 2500mg... For comparison, weight lifting supplements tends to max out at about 400mg, and from experience if you take those amounts and then don't do a hard workout, you're bouncing off the walls and it's horrible. I find it hard to imagine effectively spacing out 2500mg in a way that'd leave me focused rather than jittery as hell, despite a very high tolerance level, and without wrecking any hope of decent sleep.... Then again, tolerance levels for caffeine varies greatly - at one point I'd often drink a red bull right before sleep.
- gruseom 13y agoI think the assumption has been that their cups were much smaller or weaker than ours.