Coffee causes genius

http://www.ecm-espresso.it/images/news02/BlueSun.jpg

There's a famous painting of Ludwig Van out of it on coffee somewhere on the net. I've been trying to find it without success.

http://www.cyberhymnal.org/img/b/e/beethoven_lv.jpg

ummm ... they look abit like mine

Plate 3. Ferdinand Schimon, Portrait of Beethoven 1818-1819, oil, Beethovenhaus, Bonn. According to the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft Bicentennial Edition of "Ludwig Van Beethoven," the unusual expression of the eyes is said to be due to the fact that Schimon worked on them when Beethoven had invited him for a cup of "sixty bean" coffee, i.e. at a time when the composer was particularly excited by drinking strong coffee.(1)

60 beans....Ha
A single shot Espreso is about 50 to 55 depending on the bean size

So what you're saying is a double espresso is almost twice as powerful as what Beethoven was drinking? We should have a lot more geniuses then if this coffee causes genius theory is to be believed.

so there goes my theroy LOL
ok It says 60 bean per cup
But not how nany he drank a day???

But it does not say there that he was also an obsessive compulsive
and measured the shape and size of each bean before he drank them
( he was looking for a uniform shape and size )

AaronHz...... I cannot remember
But I am looking

Withdrawal From Caffeine
If you quit cold turkey, it only takes your brain two weeks to return to normal operating procedure. During those two weeks, you may feel headaches, lethargy, fatigue, muscle pain, nausea, or flu-like symptoms. Therefore, it is best to cut down gradually.

I'm sorry.

by Honore de Balzac

translated from the French by Robert Onopa

Coffee is a great power in my life; I have observed its effects on an epic scale. Coffee roasts your insides.
Many people claim coffee inspires them, but, as everybody knows, coffee only makes boring people even more
boring. Think about it: although more grocery stores in Paris are staying open until midnight, few writers are
actually becoming more spiritual.

But as Brillat-Savarin has correctly observed, coffee sets the blood in motion and stimulates the muscles; it
accelerates the digestive processes, chases away sleep, and gives us the capacity to engage a little longer in the
exercise of our intellects. It is on this last point, in particular, that I want to add my personal experience to
Brillat-Savarin's observations.

Coffee affects the diaphragm and the plexus of the stomach, from which it reaches the brain by barely
perceptible radiations that escape complete analysis; that aside, we may surmise that our primary nervous flux
conducts an electricity emitted by coffee when we drink it. Coffee's power changes over time. [Italian composer
Gioacchino] Rossini has personally experienced some of these effects as, of course, have I. "Coffee," Rossini
told me, "is an affair of fifteen or twenty days; just the right amount of time, fortunately, to write an opera."
This is true. But the length of time during which one can enjoy the benefits of coffee can be extended.

For a while - for a week or two at most - you can obtain the right amount of stimulation with one, then two
cups of coffee brewed from beans that have been crushed with gradually increasing force and infused with hot
water.

For another week, by decreasing the amount of water used, by pulverizing the coffee even more finely, and by
infusing the grounds with cold water, you can continue to obtain the same cerebral power.

When you have produced the finest grind with the least water possible, you double the dose by drinking two
cups at a time; particularly vigorous constitutions can tolerate three cups. In this manner one can continue
working for several more days.

Finally, I have discovered a horrible, rather brutal method that I recommend only to men of excessive vigor,
men with thick black hair and skin covered with liver spots, men with big square hands and legs shaped like
bowling pins. It is a question of using finely pulverized, dense coffee, cold and anhydrous, consumed on an
empty stomach. This coffee falls into your stomach, a sack whose velvety interior is lined with tapestries of
suckers and papillae. The coffee finds nothing else in the sack, and so it attacks these delicate and voluptuous
linings; it acts like a food and demands digestive juices; it wrings and twists the stomach for these juices,
appealing as a pythoness appeals to her god; it brutalizes these beautiful stomach linings as a wagon master
abuses ponies; the plexus becomes inflamed; sparks shoot all the way up to the brain. From that moment on,
everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary
fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor
deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on
imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread
with ink - for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and
concludes with black powder.

I recommended this way of drinking coffee to a friend of mine, who absolutely wanted to finish a job promised
for the next day: he thoughthe'd been poisoned and took to his bed, which he guarded like a married man. He
was tall, blond, slender and had thinning hair; he apparently had a stomach of papier-mache. There has been, on
my part, a failure of observation.

When you have reached the point of consuming this kind of coffee, then become exhausted and decide that
you really must have more, even though you make it of the finest ingredients and take it perfectly fresh, you
will fall into horrible sweats, suffer feebleness of the nerves, and undergo episodes of severe drowsiness. I
don't know what would happen if you kept at it then: a sensible nature counseled me to stop at this point,
seeing that immediate death was not otherwise my fate. To be restored, one must begin with recipes made with
milk and chicken and other white meats: finally the tension on the harp strings eases, and one returns to the
relaxed, meandering, simple-minded, and cryptogamous life of the retired bourgeoisie.

The state coffee puts one in when it is drunk on an empty stomach under these magisterial conditions produces
a kind of animation that looks like anger: one's voice rises, one's gestures suggest unhealthy impatience: one
wants everything to proceed with the speed of ideas; one becomes brusque, ill-tempered about nothing. One
actually becomes that fickle character, The Poet, condemned by grocers and their like. One assumes that
everyone is equally lucid. A man of spirit must therefore avoid going out in public. I discovered this singular
state through a series of accidents that made me lose, without any effort, the ecstasy I had been feeling. Some
friends, with whom I had gone out to the country, witnessed me arguing about everything, haranguing with
monumental bad faith. The following day I recognized my wrongdoing and we searched the cause. My friends
were wise men of the first rank, and we found the problem soon enough: coffee wanted its victim.

Schlendrian You wicked child, you disobedient girl,
oh! when will I get my way;
give up coffee!
Lieschen Father, don't be so severe!
If I can't drink
my bowl of coffee three times daily,
then in my torment I will shrivel up
like a piece of roast goat.

Mm! how sweet the coffee tastes,
more delicious than a thousand kisses,
mellower than muscatel wine.