Treatise on Modern Stimulants

Synopsis

Honoré de Balzac’s Treatise on Modern Stimulants is a meditation on excess by a man who lived by means of excess—an author very conscious of the fact that his gargantuan body of work was driven by an intake of intellectual stimulants (his bouts of writing would typically require ten to fifteen cups a day of his preferred coffee) that would ultimately shorten his life.