Experts' Expert: Honoré de Balzac on how to prepare coffee

From the New Yorker: "Honoré de Balzac is said to have consumed the equivalent of fifty cups of coffee a day at his peak. He did not drink coffee, though — he pulverized coffee beans into a fine dust and ingested the dry powder on an empty stomach. He described the approach as 'horrible, rather brutal,' to be tried only by men of 'excessive vigor.'"

"He documented the effects of the process in his 1839 essay 'Traité des Excitants Modernes' ('Treatise on Modern Stimulants')."

Excerpts from his treatise appear above.