Online reading of the book pathology of social life a treatise on modern stimulants. Another potential killer - if not enough of the previous one - lack of vitamin C

It just so happened that all people are divided into two opposite camps - those who eat meat and other animal sources of protein and those who prefer to eat food of plant origin. Most avid meat eaters cannot imagine a day without this protein product, but they have also probably heard more than once about the supposedly harmful effects of meat on our body. We invite you to finally find out what happens if you eat only meat.

So, your body can go crazy. So do not do this, even if you really hate cauliflower

First, eating only meat leads to a lack of fiber in the body, which, in turn, leads to constipation and discomfort. And these are not the most unpleasant consequences.

To give up carbohydrates means to give up the easiest way to get energy. The body will have to switch to burning fat and increase the rate of protein breakdown to sustain life, which has a rather dangerous side effect.

Protein poisoning - the symptoms of which are dizziness, nausea, diarrhea, and from which there is a chance of death - is an excess of urea produced in the liver when protein is converted into glucose for energy

Rabbit meat is even more dangerous in this sense. It contains so little fat that the body will have to absorb its reserves. It has been proven that eating only rabbit meat can lead to extreme malnutrition.

Another potential killer - if not enough of the previous one - is a lack of vitamin C. Man is one of the few living beings unable to produce it on his own.

Lack of this vitamin in the diet causes scurvy, the symptoms of which are tooth loss, bleeding gums, and even personality changes. In extreme cases, scurvy leads to death.

But how do the Eskimos survive in Chukotka, because their diet consists mainly of meat?

Well, they often eat liver, rich in vitamins D and A, and fish oil with its omega-3 fatty acids. Also, the Eskimos are adapted to the processing of proteins into glucose due to their enlarged liver and have a large bladder to get rid of excess urea. Yes, and they also eat a lot of raw meat.

So until you have the right genetics for this, we do not recommend this kind of diet for you.

Any excess that affects the mucous membrane shortens life.

7th axiom

§ I. Statement of the question

The consumption of five substances, discovered in the last two centuries and included in our everyday life, has grown so much in recent years that it threatens to unrecognizably change the face of modern societies. These five substances are:

1. Vodka or alcohol, the basis of all liqueurs that appeared in the last years of the reign of Louis XIV and were invented in order to warm his chilly old age.

2. Sugar. This substance has only recently Sugar... only recently...- In the "Physiology of Taste" (Meditation VI, § 48), the date of discovery of a method to extract sugar not only from sugar cane, but also from those plants that grow in a temperate climate, in particular from beets, is indicated as about 1740. The rapid development of this production in France occurred at the beginning of the 19th century in connection with the continental blockade that Napoleon announced to England in 1806 and which made it difficult for sugar to reach Europe from the English colonies. appeared on the table of the masses, as the French industry learned to produce it in large quantities and sell it at the price it had, until it became a rarity and rose in value. This price will, of course, fall even further, despite the efforts of the tax administration, which is just waiting to tax it.

3. Tea, known for fifty years Tea, known for fifty years...- If in England tea has been popular since the 17th century, in France it came into fashion only on the eve of the revolution of 1789-1794..

4. Coffee. Although the Arabs discovered it long ago, in Europe this aphrodisiac has been widely used since the middle of the eighteenth century.

5. Tobacco, the use of which, by means of burning, has become universal and excessive only since peace reigned in France.

First of all, let us consider the question from the most exalted point of view.

Some part of his strength man spends on the satisfaction of one or another of his needs; from this follows the sensation which we call pleasure; it varies and depends on temperament and climate. Our organs are the stewards of our pleasures. Almost all organs have a dual purpose: they perceive substances, introduce them into our body, and then return them back, in whole or in part, in one form or another, to a common storage, earth or atmosphere - an arsenal where all creatures draw their neo-creative powers. . These few words contain the whole chemistry of human life. Scientists will not go further than this formula. You will not find a single feeling, no matter what area it may belong to (and by feeling one should understand its entire mechanism), which would not obey this rule. Any excess is based on the pleasure that a person wants to receive again and again, regardless of the immutable law established by nature. The less power a person expends, the more he gravitates toward excesses, for thought irresistibly draws him to them.

I. For a person to live in society means to spend himself more quickly or less quickly.

It follows that the further a society has advanced along the path of civilization and the more peaceful its life, the more it indulges in excesses. For other people, a peaceful life is detrimental. Perhaps this is what inspired Napoleon with the idea that "war is a natural state" War is a natural state.- This statement of Napoleon was included in the collection "Napoleon's Maxims and Thoughts", compiled by Balzac and published in 1838..

In order to absorb, suck in, decompose into parts, assimilate, and then return or recreate some substance - operations that are the mechanism of any pleasure without exception - a person directs his power or part of it to that organ or organs that control favorite pleasure .

Nature requires that all organs take an equal part in the life of a person, while society intensifies in people the thirst for this or that pleasure, and the satisfaction of this thirst leads to the concentration in this or that organ of a large part, and often even all of the force; these surges of power come at the expense of all the other organs and deprive them of just as much as the gourmet organs consume. Hence the disease and, ultimately, the reduction of life. This theory is terrible in its reliability, like all theories based on facts, and not put forward a priori. Constant mental activity causes increased work of the brain, the force is concentrated there, stretches its delicate shell, enriches its pulp: but it empties the lower floor so much that a disease awaits a man of genius, decently called frigidity in medicine. Frigidity ... - The 19th century forensic medicine used this term to denote male impotence.. On the contrary, if you spend your life at the legs of sofas on which endlessly charming women reclined, if you fall in love bravely, you will become dumb as a Franciscan friar. ...as dumb as a Franciscan friar.- The free-thinking poets of the 18th century, in their obscene verses, portrayed the Franciscans as depraved and drunkards.. The mind loses the ability to rise to higher spheres of knowledge. True strength lies between these two excesses. Leading a life of intellectual and love at the same time, a man of genius dies, as Raphael and Lord Byron died. ...how Raphael and Lord Byron died.- Rafael died at 37, Byron - at 36; both were brought to the grave by a fever, which turned out to be fatal due to the exhaustion of the body and unwillingness to take care of themselves.. The chaste person dies from excess of work, just as the voluptuary from debauchery; but this kind of death is extremely rare. The abuse of tobacco, coffee, opium and vodka cause serious disorders and lead to early death. An organ that is constantly irritated, stuffed endlessly, hypertrophies: it grows to an abnormal size, suffers and destroys the organism, which eventually cannot stand and dies.

According to the current laws, everyone is his own master. But if the citizens who have the right to be elected, as well as the proletarians ...who have the right to be elected, just like the proletarians...- Under the July Monarchy, people who received at least 500 francs of annual income had the right to be elected. who read these lines, believe that they only do harm to themselves when they smoke like a tugboat, or drink like Alexander ...drink like Alexander...- This refers to feasts and drinking parties - the favorite pastime of Alexander the Great at the end of his life., then, oddly enough, they are mistaken; their behavior destroys posterity and entails degeneration, which leads to the devastation of the country. One generation has no right to harm another.

II. Nutrition is a continuation of the family.

Have this axiom carved in golden letters in your mess halls. It is strange that Brillat-Savarin, having demanded from science to increase the number of senses at the expense of the sense of procreation ...feelings of procreation...- In Meditation I, Brillat-Savarin claims that there are six senses in the world, adding to the five known (sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste) the feeling of procreation, or physical love, attracting one sex to another in order to continue in offspring., I forgot to note the connection that exists between what a person produces and substances that can change the conditions of his life. With what pleasure I should have read the following axiom from him:

III. Those who eat fish give birth to girls, those who eat meat give birth to boys, those who eat bread give birth to thinkers.

The fate of a people depends on its food and diet. Cereal crops were created by the peoples of artists. Vodka killed the Indian tribes. I call Russia an autocracy based on alcohol. Who knows if the abuse of chocolate was one of the reasons for the decline of the Spanish nation, which, in the era when chocolate was discovered, could become as strong as the Roman Empire. ...could become as strong as the Roman Empire.- This refers to the middle of the 16th century, when the Spanish king Charles V was simultaneously the emperor of the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation"; however, by the beginning of the 17th century, when, according to Brillat-Savarin (Meditation VI, § 10), chocolate took root in Spain and Spanish ladies took a fancy to it, Spain had already lost its supremacy in Europe, and, of course, chocolate was not to blame.. Tobacco has already dealt with the Turks, the Dutch and threatens Germany. None of our statesmen, who are usually more concerned with themselves than with public affairs, except to take their ambitious plans, their mistresses and their capitals as such, knows where France is going, consuming tobacco immoderately, using sugar, potatoes instead of wheat, vodka, etc.

See how different the coloring, the essay of the great people of our time and the great people of bygone eras, and after all, great people are the spokesmen for their generation and the customs of their time! How many different kinds of ruined talents we meet, broken by the very first failure! Our fathers are the culprits of today's grinding.

Here are the results of an experiment carried out in London; two people who deserve deep respect vouched for the reliability of the information: one of them is a scientist, the other is a politician; this experience is relevant to the issues of interest to us.

With the permission of the British Government, the three men on death row were offered a choice: either to be hanged according to the custom of this country, or to continue living on tea, coffee or chocolate, and on no account to take any other food, whatever nature it may be. nor was, and do not drink any other liquid. These dudes agreed. Perhaps every convict would have done the same. Since the products were different and, consequently, gave different chances of salvation, the criminals cast lots.

The man who ate only chocolate died eight months later.

A man who ate only coffee lived for two years.

A man who ate only tea lasted for three whole years.

I suspect that the East India Company has achieved this experiment in their own interests.

A man who ate chocolate rotted alive, eaten by worms. Its members died one by one, like members of the Spanish royal family.

A man who ate only coffee was burned alive, as if he had been incinerated by the fire of Gomorrah. Lime could be made from his remains. Such a proposal was received, but was rejected as contrary to the immortality of the soul.

A man who ate only tea lost weight and became almost transparent; he melted like a candle: his body shone through; a philanthropist could put a lamp behind him and read The Times. A more daring experience was considered inappropriate by the British.

I can't help noticing how philanthropic it is to use a man condemned to death for scientific experiments instead of just cutting off his head. Anatomy theaters are already supplying animal fat for candle production; is it worth it to stop half way? Let those condemned to death be handed over to be torn to pieces not by executioners, but by scientists.

In France, an experiment was carried out with sugar.

Mr Magendie François Magendie (1783-1855) - physiologist, since 1830 the head physician of the Paris City Hospital, also mentioned in the Treatise on Gait. Balzac refers to the experience that Magendie described in his "Note on the nutritional properties of substances that do not contain nitrogen" (1817); the scientist came to the conclusion that "sugar alone is not enough to maintain vitality in a dog." fed dogs with sugar alone; the results of his experiments were made public, as well as what a terrible death poor animals died - friends of man, they share his vices (dogs are reckless); but the results of these experiments do not prove anything about people.

§ II About vodka

Grapes were the first to discover the laws of fermentation - a new action that, under the influence of atmospheric conditions, takes place between its constituent parts and, after distillation, forms a chemical compound containing alcohol; since then, chemistry has found it in many botanical products. Wine, a product obtained directly from grapes, is the oldest aphrodisiac: by merit and honor, we put it in first place. However, alcohol now kills the most people. Before, everyone was afraid of cholera. Vodka is no less formidable scourge.

What reveler has not seen around the great Parisian market between two o'clock in the morning and five o'clock in the morning a motley human carpet is the habitues of distillers, whose wretched shops are far from the palaces built in London for consumers who give themselves away, but where the same thing happens. It's the carpet. The rags and faces merge with each other, and it is no longer clear where the rags end and the flesh begins, where the cap is, and where the nose; often the face is dirtier than the torn linen that sticks out from under the top dress; this is how these ordinary-looking, sunken-eyed, frail, gray-haired, bluish-pale monsters, distorted by vodka, look like. These people breed miserable degenerates who either die or turn into terrible ragamuffins - Parisian homeless children. The racks of liquor stores breed the puny creatures that make up the working people. Parisian girls are ruined by the abuse of liquor.

I would be an unworthy observer if I did not pay due attention to the results of intoxication. I had to study the pleasures that seduce the people and which, let's face it, seduced Sheridan, then Byron and tutti quanti Here: all sorts of others (ital.).. The matter was not easy.

Like a water drinker, perhaps hardened by years of coffee habit, I have attacked wine, but it does not have the slightest effect on me, no matter how much I drink, depending on the capacity of my stomach. I am a dear companion. Knowing this peculiarity of mine, one of my friends wanted to crush my integrity. I never smoked. He hoped to win with these first gifts brought on the altar diis ignotis Unknown gods (lat.). - A paraphrased quotation from the "Acts of the Apostles" (17, 23), where the apostle Paul says: "While passing and examining your shrines, I also found an altar, on which is written:" to the unknown God. This which you honor without knowing it, I preach to you.”. So, in 1822, one day when a performance was being given at the Italian Opera, my friend challenged me in the hope of making me forget about the music of Rossini and the voices of Cinti, Levasseur, Bordogna and Pasta and lay me down on a sofa that attracted his eyes even more. during dessert, and on which he eventually lay down himself. Seventeen empty bottles witnessed his defeat. He made me smoke two cigars ...in 1822... my friend... made me smoke two cigars...- Judging by Balzac's letter to Hanska dated the end of March 1833, this friend was Eugene Xu, but in this case the anecdote cited should be dated not 1822, but 1832, a date that is much more likely also in view of the mention of kind words spoken to Balzac by the composer Rossini (in 1822 he was not in Paris, and if he had been there, he would hardly have begun to crumble in pleasantries in front of the unknown Balzac). The whole following scene with intoxication in the Italian opera was written before the "Treatise on Stimulants"; she was included in Balzac's essay "Journey from Paris to the Island of Java" (1832), but there only immoderate consumption of wine was named as the cause of intoxication. In a letter to Ganskaya and in a treatise, on the contrary, Balzac calls cigars the source of trouble., and as I descended the stairs, I felt the effects of the tobacco. It seemed to me as if the steps were buckling under my feet, but I held myself fairly straight and got safely to the carriage; serious and not inclined to talk, I went to the theater. In the carriage, I felt like I was in hell, opened the window, and then the fresh air finally “hit my head” - this is the expression of drunkards. Everything swam before my eyes. The steps of the stairs of the opera house sagged even more under my feet than the steps of the house where I was visiting; but without incident I went up to the balcony and took my seat. I could not guarantee that I was in Paris in the midst of a dazzling society, neither toilets nor whose faces I could yet distinguish. My soul was drunk. What I heard from the overture to the opera "La Gazza" "Thieving Magpie" (it.)., were fantastic sounds that pour from heaven, reaching the ears of a woman in prayer ecstasy. The musical phrases reached me through glittering clouds, devoid of the flaws inherent in the creations of mortals, and full of divine perfection, captured by an inspired artist. The orchestra seemed to me to be a large instrument, where some kind of work was being done, but I could not catch either the rhythm or its mechanism, dimly distinguishing bass cuffs, swinging bows, golden bends of trombones, clarinets, trumpet vents, but not distinguishing people at all. Only one or two powdered motionless heads and two puffed up grimacing faces alarmed me. I dozed.

“This gentleman gives off a spirit of wine,” said the lady quietly, who often touched my cheek with her hat and whom I, without noticing myself, also often touched my cheek.

I confess I was hurt.

“No, madame,” I objected, “it is the spirit of music.” I walked out, holding myself pointedly straight, with the cold calmness of a man who is not appreciated, and therefore he leaves, instilling in ill-wishers the fear that they are poisoning an unrecognized genius. In order to prove to this lady that I am not in the habit of drinking and that the smell emanating from me is nothing more than an unfortunate misunderstanding, completely alien to my manners, I intended to go to the box of Madame de Duchess de ... (let us keep her name a secret), whose lovely, I saw a head drowning in feathers and lace from afar and was so surprised at her unthinkable headdress that I wanted to check whether this whole structure was really on her head or was it some kind of optical illusion, which received for several hours a special gift to see everything in a bizarre light irresistibly drew me to her.

“When I am there,” I thought, “beside an elegant noble lady and her affected and feigned virtuous friend, no one will even think of suspecting me of being tipsy; seeing me in the company of such worthy ladies, everyone will take me for an important person. But I was still wandering through the endless corridors of the Italian Opera in search of that damned box, when the performance ended and the crowd rushing to the exit pinned me against the wall. This evening was undoubtedly one of the most poetic of my life. I have never seen so many feathers, so many laces, so many beautiful women, so many windows through which curious and admirers peer into a box. I never showed so much energy, never showed so much character, I would even say stubbornness, if it were not for the respect with which one should treat oneself. The Resilience of the Dutch King William Dutch king William- William I (1772-1843) - King of Holland in 1815-1840, unsuccessfully trying by military means to prevent the separation of Belgium from his kingdom. In the autumn of 1830, Belgium proclaimed itself independent and defended its independence thanks to the support of European countries, primarily France; in 1832, Holland again tried to take back Belgium by force, but this was prevented by the French army. Wilhelm I resigned himself to the inevitability and recognized the independence of Belgium only in 1839, when the Treatise on Modern Stimulants was written. in the Belgian question cannot be compared with the stubbornness that I showed, rising on tiptoe and keeping a friendly smile on my face. However, at times I was seized by fits of rage, at other moments I had tears in my eyes. This weakness puts me below the Dutch king. Besides, I was tormented by terrible suspicions when I imagined what this lady might think of me if she did not see me in the company of the duchess and her friend; but I consoled myself with the thought of contempt for the whole human race. However, I was wrong. That evening a glorious company gathered at the Italian Opera. Everyone was very attentive to me and diligently made way for me. Finally, a very beautiful lady, leaving, took my arm. I owed this honor to Rossini, who said a few flattering words to me, which I do not remember, but which, it is true, were remarkably witty: he is as excellent a conversationalist as a musician. In my opinion, this lady was a duchess, and perhaps an usher. My recollection is very vague, and I think that it was rather an usher than a duchess. However, she had feathers and lace. Again feathers and again lace! In short, I ended up in my carriage; among other things, this was facilitated by the fact that my coachman was in the same deplorable state as I was, and fell asleep alone in the square in front of the theater. It was pouring rain, but I don't remember a single drop falling on me. For the first time in my life I tasted one of the sharpest, most fantastic pleasures, I knew the indescribable delight, the unearthly pleasure that you experience from driving through Paris at half past twelve at night, rushing through the street lamps, seeing how myriads of shops, lights, signs, faces flicker , crowds of people, women under umbrellas, brightly lit intersections, dark squares, noticing through the streams of rain a thousand things that seem to have been seen somewhere during the day, but in fact have never been seen. And again feathers, and again lace! Even in pastry shops!

That day, I understood well what the beauty of drunkenness is. Intoxication throws a veil over real life, drowns out the consciousness of hardships and sorrows, and allows you to throw off the burden of thoughts. It became clear to me why it attracted great geniuses and why people indulge in drunkenness. Instead of stimulating the brain, wine intoxicates it. Far from causing an influx of strength from the stomach to the head, after the first bottle of wine drunk, the taste sensations are dulled, the channels are satiated, the taste is beaten off, and the drunkard can no longer distinguish the quality of the served drinks. Alcohol penetrated the body and partially passed into the blood. So, remember the following axiom:

IV. Intoxication is short-term poisoning.

By constantly returning to this poison, the drunkard eventually changes the nature of his blood, he slows down its flow, destroying its basic elements or corrupting them, and they become so upset that most drunkards lose the ability to procreate, or their corrupted blood leads to the fact that they have children with dropsy of the brain. Do not forget that the day after the orgy, and often already at the end of it, the drunkard is tormented by a deadly thirst. This thirst, quite obviously derived from the exhaustion of the gastric juices and salivary glands, may serve as proof of the validity of our conclusions.

§ III. About coffee

Regarding this substance, the information reported by Brillat-Savarin is far from complete. ... the information reported by Brillat-Savarin is far from complete.- In the Physiology of Taste, coffee is discussed in § 9 Meditations VI; Brillat-Savarin emphasizes the stimulating effect of this drink on the brain, warns parents about how harmful it is to give coffee to children, tells an anecdote about how once, after drinking two cups of strong coffee, he could not sleep the whole night, and explains the effect of coffee the perfection of the literary works of Voltaire and Buffon.. I can add something to what he says about coffee, because I drink this drink very often and can observe its effect on a large scale. Coffee - internal heat. Many people believe that coffee sharpens the mind, but everyone could see that the bores, drinking it, become even more boring. Finally, although the grocers in Paris are open until midnight, other writers do not get any wittier from this.

As Brillat-Savarin rightly remarked, coffee speeds up the flow of blood, makes the spiritual forces spring up; excitement accelerates the digestion of food, banishes sleep and allows you to maintain mental activity for a longer time. I take the liberty of amending this Briillat-Savarin article based on personal experience and the observations of several great minds.

Coffee acts on the diaphragm and on the muscles of the stomach, and from there its effect extends to the very brain, and so imperceptibly that it eludes all analysis; nevertheless, it can be assumed that the nervous fluid is a conductor of electricity, which this substance releases by finding it in us and setting it into action. His power over us is neither permanent nor undivided. Rossini tested on himself the effects of coffee, already known to me from my own experience.

“Coffee,” he told me, “is enough for fifteen to twenty days, fortunately, this is just enough to compose an opera.”

This is true. But it is possible to extend the time during which a person enjoys the beneficial effects of coffee. This skill is so necessary for many people that it is not worth neglecting the description of the way to achieve the desired result.

All you wonderful people, candles starting to burn from the head, come and listen to the gospel of vigils and mental labor!

I. Turkish coffee is tastier than coffee ground in a mill. Turkish coffee is tastier than coffee ground in a mill.- Brillat-Savarin insisted on the same..

In many mechanical things, aimed at giving a person pleasure, the inhabitants of the East are much higher than Europeans: their contemplation, akin to the habit of toads, which sit for a long time without moving, opening their golden eyes, like two suns, to nature, allowed them to see in reality what what we learn through scientific analysis. The detrimental basis of coffee is tannin, a harmful substance that has not yet been sufficiently studied by chemists. When the lining of the stomach is exposed to tannin, or when the tannic properties of coffee have dulled its sensitivity through frequent use, it ceases to shrink sharply, and this is precisely what the toilers seek. Hence, if the lover does not refuse coffee, serious malfunctions occur. There is a man in London whose intemperate use of coffee has twisted him into a gnarled, old man with gout. In Paris I knew an engraver who took five years to recover from the state to which his addiction to coffee had brought him. Finally, recently one artist - his name was Shenavar Chenavar Aimé (1798-1838), French painter.- just burned alive. He went into a cafe the way a worker goes into a tavern - every now and then. Coffee lovers do the same as all people who are seized by some kind of passion; they go on and on and like Nicole Nicolet Jean Baptiste (1710-1796) - a rope dancer who performed at fairs; his ability to jump "higher and higher" became proverbial., rise higher and higher, to the point of abuse. By crushing coffee beans, you spray them into strange shaped molecules; the aroma is released, and the tannin remains in them. That is why Italians, Venetians, Greeks and Turks can, without any danger to themselves, incessantly drink coffee, which the French contemptuously call coffee. Voltaire drank this coffee.

So remember the following. Coffee consists of two substances: the first is an extractive substance, easily soluble in cold or hot water, it is a conductor of aroma; the second is a tannin, which dissolves worse in water and slowly and with difficulty separates from the areola surrounding the molecule. Hence the following axiom:

V. Leaving coffee in contact with boiling water, especially for a long time, is heresy; to cook it in water with coffee grounds means to expose your stomach and other organs to tanning.

II. Speaking of coffee made with the immortal coffee pot in the de Bellois way, not the du Bellois way ... de Bellois, not du Bellois ...- Brillat-Savarin talks about the method of making coffee "according to Dubellois"; the inventor of the method, Abbé du Bellois, was a cousin of Cardinal Jean Baptiste de Bellois (1709-1808), Archbishop of Paris in 1802-1808, while Balzac was on friendly terms with the offspring of this family, Count, and then Marquis Auguste Benjamin Guillaume de Bellois (1812 -1871). The very method of making coffee according to de Bellois, as Brillat-Savarin explains, is as follows: coffee is poured into a porcelain or silver vessel with small holes and poured with boiling water; this decoction is heated to a boil, filtered and a tasty and clean drink is obtained.(the one to whose reflections we owe this ecumenical method was a cousin of the cardinal and, like him, descended from an ancient noble family of the Marquis de Bellois), then coffee has more strength when it is poured with cold water than when it is brewed with boiling water. This is the second way to enhance its impact.

When you grind coffee, it releases aroma and tannin at the same time, which delights the palate and stimulates the nerve plexus that affects thousands of brain cells.

Thus, there are two stages: Turkish coffee grounds and ground coffee.

III. The strength of coffee depends on how much coffee is poured into the upper vessel, on how much it is rubbed, and on how much water is poured, which is the third way to make coffee.

Thus, over a longer or shorter period of time - one week, at most two weeks - you can get excited with one, then two cups of ground coffee brewed with boiling water, gradually increasing its strength.

Another week you pour cold water into the coffee, grind the coffee, grind the powder and reduce the amount of water, thereby again achieving the same dose of mental energy.

When you've crushed the powder the most and poured the least amount of water, you increase the dose by drinking two cups, then some wild heads go up to three cups. This will help keep you going for a few more days.

Finally, I discovered a terrible and cruel way, which I can only advise people who are extremely powerful, with black coarse hair, with ocher-red skin, with strong arms, with legs as strong as the balustrade posts in the Place Louis XV. We are talking about the use of ground coffee on an empty stomach, pounded cold anhydride (a chemical term for the complete or almost complete absence of water). Coffee enters your stomach, which, as you know from Brillat-Savarin ...as you know from Brillat-Savarin...- In the "Physiology of Taste" several pages are devoted to the work of the stomach in Meditation XVI; Balzac, however, retells the predecessor very freely., is a velvety pouch from the inside, covered with papillae and tubercles; your stomach is empty, and it pounces on these tender sweet walls, taking the place of food, hungry for their juices; he draws juices, he conjures them, as a soothsayer conjures her god, he does not spare these wonderful walls, like a driver who mercilessly whips frisky horses; the nerve plexuses become inflamed, they burn, and sparks from them fly to the very brain. From that moment on, everything starts to move: thoughts form up like battalions of the Napoleonic army before a battle, and here the battle is actually played out. Memories, unfolding banners, rush to the attack; the light cavalry of comparison gallops; the artillery of logic rushes to the rescue with their guns and charging caps; witticisms fly like arrows; figurative expressions appear; the paper is streaked with ink, for the vigil begins and ends with streams of black goo, like a battle with black powder.

I advised a drink prepared in this way to a friend of mine, who was anxious to finish the promised work by the next morning; he decided that he had poisoned himself, fell ill and did not get out of bed, like a newlywed. He was tall, with sparse blond hair; the walls of his stomach were as thin as paper. I lacked observation.

The state in which the coffee prepared according to the above recipe and drunk on an empty stomach brings you is nervous excitement akin to nervous excitement in a fit of rage: words hit your head, gestures express painful impatience; a person wants everything to go as planned; he is quick-tempered over trifles; he becomes fickle, like the poets so scolded by the shopkeepers; he attributes to others the clear mind he himself has. A smart person should not appear in public and should not let anyone near him. I discovered this strange state of mind when several times I brought myself into excitement, which, for lack of work, poured out on those around me. The friends I came to visit in the village saw me as quarrelsome and stubborn, an avid debater. The next day, I admitted I was wrong. We began to look for the cause of my behavior. My friends were big scientists, so we quickly figured out what was going on. Coffee imperiously demanded production.

These observations are not only valid and not subject to any changes, except those associated with various idiosyncrasies, they are consistent with the experiences of numerous practitioners, including the famous Rossini, one of the people who studied the laws of taste most deeply, a hero worthy of Brillat-Savarin .

OBSERVATION. In some weak natures, coffee causes blood flow to the brain; it is safe, but instead of feeling energized, these people want to sleep, so they say that coffee makes them sleepy. These people may have quick feet and a tinned stomach, but they are not suited for mental pursuits. Two young travelers, Messrs. Combe and Tamizier Two young travelers, Messrs. Combe and Tamizier released in 1835-1838. the five-volume Journey to Abyssinia, where, pointing out the connection between the abuse of drinking coffee and impotence, they noted: “The Sultan’s wife, who, seeing how a stallion was being singled, claimed that the same result could be achieved by giving him coffee instead of water, without a doubt , based on my own sad experience., saw that the Abyssinians were for the most part powerless: both travelers did not hesitate to attribute this unfortunate phenomenon to the immoderate consumption of extremely strong coffee. If this book gets to England, then there is a request to the English government: to solve this serious question on the first convict that comes across, unless it is a woman and not an old man.

Tea also contains tannin, but it has narcotic properties; it has no effect on the brain, but affects only the nerve plexus and intestines, which absorb drugs faster and better. To this day, the method of making tea is not controversial. I don't know to what extent the effect of tea depends on how much water tea drinkers pour into their stomachs. According to the experience of the English, he gives English morality, pale misses, English hypocrisy and English slander; it is reliably known that he brings a woman moral harm no less than physical. Where women drink tea, love is corrupted at its core; these women are pale, sickly, talkative, boring, and love to lecture others. Strong tea in large quantities irritates some powerful organisms and plunges into deep melancholy; it awakens dreams, but not as vivid as opium, for these visions visit you in a smoky and intoxicating atmosphere. Your thoughts are malleable like blonde ladies. Your state is not a sound sleep, which distinguishes healthy tired organisms, but some kind of vague slumber, something like morning oblivion. Too much coffee, like too much tea, makes the skin dry and hot. Coffee often makes you sweat and torments you with intense thirst. Those who abuse it have very poor and thick saliva.

§ IV. About tobacco

It was not for nothing that I left tobacco to last, firstly, this excess appeared last, and besides, it prevails over the rest.

Nature has put limits on our pleasures. God forbid me to define here the fighting qualities of love and hurt the feelings of the respectable public; but it is irrefutably proved that the glory of Hercules was brought by his twelfth labor ...the twelfth feat...- Apparently, we are talking about the "apocryphal" in relation to the canonical set of the thirteenth feat of Hercules, who managed to deflower fifty nymphs in one night; this miracle was mentioned in a letter to Balzac dated May 28, 1835 by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstahl, an Austrian orientalist who advised Balzac during his work on Shagreen Skin., which today, when women suffer much more from cigar smoke than from the fire of love, is considered legendary. Everyone gets bored with sweets very quickly, even children. Abuse of strong drinks allows you to live no more than two years; Abuse of coffee leads to diseases that make you say goodbye to it. As for smoking, it seems to a person that he can smoke indefinitely. But he is delusional. Heavy smoker Brousset Brousset François (1772-1838) - a French doctor who considered the source of all diseases to be excessive excitation of various organs, and the universal medicine was relaxation agents, including bloodletting; giving advice to jealous husbands in the Physiology of Marriage (Meditation XII), Balzac recommends that they choose Brousset as their idol and, at the slightest indisposition, put leeches on his wife in order to destroy excess energy in her. had Herculean strength; if he had not worked so much and smoked so much, he would have lived to be a hundred years old: he recently died, and given his cyclopean build, we can say that he died in the prime of life. Finally, one dandy, who sinned with tobacco worship as a god, received an infection of the throat, and since it was absolutely impossible to remove it, he died.

It is astonishing that Brillat-Savarin, who titled his book "Physiology of Taste" and did a fine job of showing the role played by the nasal and oral cavities in the pleasure of our taste, forgot to include a chapter on tobacco.

Tobacco was consumed by the nose for a long time before being consumed by the mouth; it acts on the paired organs that Brillat-Savarin miraculously noted in us: the palate, the areas adjacent to it and the nasal cavity. At the time when the famous professor was writing his book, tobacco, indeed, had not yet conquered all sections of French society, as it does today. For a whole century it was consumed not so much in the form of smoke as in the form of powder, and today the cigar poisons society. No one ever suspected how sweet it is to be a chimney.

Tobacco smoking causes severe dizziness at first; in most of the neophytes, it causes profuse salivation, as well as nausea and vomiting. Despite such behavior of an indignant nature, the tobacco fan does not give up, he tries to get used to it. Hard learning sometimes lasts for several months. The Smoker finally wins Mithridates' victory ... Mithridates' victory ...- A hint at the Pontic king Mithridates VI Eupator (c. 132-63 BC), who, with the help of multiple doses of poison in tiny portions, brought up immunity to any poison. and experience heavenly bliss. What is another name for the effects of tobacco? The poor man does not doubt for a second what to choose: bread or smoke; a young man who does not have a single sous in his pocket, wandering around the boulevards all day and making his mistress work day and night, also chooses a cigar without hesitation; the Corsican bandit you meet in the forbidding cliffs or on the far-reaching shallows is ready to rid you of your enemy for a pound of tobacco. People in power admit that cigars console them in their greatest misfortunes. A dandy would never part with a cigar, even for the sake of the woman he loves, just as a convict would prefer to stay in the galleys if they gave him plenty of tobacco there! What power does this pleasure have over us, for which the king of kings would give half of his possessions and which, above all, comforts the unfortunate? I denied this enjoyment and advanced the following axiom:

VI. To smoke a cigar is to smoke fire.

I owe the key to this treasure to George Sand. I owe the key to this treasure to George Sand.- At the beginning of 1838, having visited George Sand in her estate Noan, Balzac began to smoke (as you know, among other habits that shocked the public, George Sand had an addiction to smoking), but he still did not become a heavy smoker.. But I only allow Indian hookah or Persian narghile. Indeed, in material enjoyment, Eastern people are much superior to us.

The Indian hookah, like the Persian narghile, is a very elegant apparatus, it pleases the eye with bizarre and exciting forms that give the user a kind of aristocratic superiority in the eyes of the astonished bourgeois. This is a pot-bellied, like a Japanese jug, a vessel with an earthenware cup on top; tobacco, patchouli, substances whose smoke you inhale are burned in an earthenware cup, for many botanical products can be smoked, some more attractive than others. The smoke passes through thin leather tubes several cubits long, embroidered with silk and silver threads; their mouthpieces are immersed in a vessel, on the bottom of which fragrant water is poured, into which a pipe descends from a higher pipe. You inhale the smoke that passes through the water and reaches you through the fact that nature abhors a void. Passing through this water, the smoke leaves all its stench in it, refreshes, becomes fragrant, without losing the basic qualities that the charring of the plant produces, it enters the thin spirals of leather pipes and comes to your palate, like a young maiden on a bed to her husband, pure, fragrant, sparkling white, desirable. This smoke delights your taste organs, it saturates them and rises to the brain, like melodious prayers fragrant with incense - to the deity. You are lying on the couch doing nothing, but you are busy, you think without tiredness, you are drunk without wine, without disgust, without the sweet eructation that champagne gives, without the nervous fatigue that coffee causes. Your brain acquires new abilities, you no longer feel the bony and heavy vault of your skull, you are hovering in a fantasy world, you are chasing your fluttering visions, like a child running with a net across a green meadow after dragonflies, you see them in their most seductive guise, and you want to implement them immediately. The brightest hopes no longer seem unrealizable to you, they have gained flesh and jump like a flock of Taglioni, but with what grace! You know it, smokers! This spectacle adorns nature, all life's difficulties recede, life is easy, reason is clear, everything appears to us in a rosy light, but - a strange thing - the theater curtain falls as soon as the hookah, cigar or pipe goes out. At what cost did you achieve this heavenly pleasure? Let's see. What we will see applies equally to the short-term effects of vodka and coffee.

The smoker stops salivating. And if it does not stop, then it completely changes, turning into a denser mass. Finally, if he never spits out saliva, he thereby clogs the vessels, clogs or destroys the taste buds, drain pipes, intricate tubercles, the delightful mechanism of which belongs to the area investigated by Raspail. Raspail François Vincent (1794-1878) - French chemist and biologist who studied the cell. with the help of a microscope, and descriptions of which, in my opinion, absolutely necessary, I look forward to.

The path of various mucous secretions, a wonderful pulp located between blood and nerves, is one of the most ingenious human circulations invented by the great watchmaker ...a great watchmaker...- This definition of God, the creator of the Universe, who "winds" the mechanism, and then the clock goes by itself according to the rules prescribed by the "watchmaker", was widely spread in French philosophy and deist literature from Fontenelle to Voltaire., to whom we owe an inventive joke called Mankind. The mediator between blood and its main product, on which the future of the human race is based, these mucous secretions are so important for the internal harmony of our body that strong experiences cause us an acute need for them in order to withstand a blow to some unknown center. Finally, they are so necessary in life that all those who have come into a great rage can remember how their throat suddenly dried up, saliva thickened and how it then slowly returned to its normal state. This phenomenon struck me so strongly that I wanted to test it in the area of the most terrible impressions. I got an invitation to dinner ahead of time in the company of people whom decency makes outcasts. ...dinner in the company of people whom propriety makes outcasts...- This refers to a dinner at the philanthropist B. Apper, which, together with Balzac, was attended by the detective Francois Eugene Vidocq and the executioner Henri Sanson, famous among other things for the fact that in 1794 he cut off the head of Queen Marie Antoinette (a free adaptation of his stories called “Notes executioner ”Balzac, together with another writer, L.-F. Leritier de Lehn, released in 1830).: the head of the detective police and the executioner of the Royal Court of Paris, however, both of them are citizens, voters and have the same rights as all other Frenchmen.

The famous head of the detective police told me that it took from a week to a month for all the criminals who passed through his hands, without exception, to restore normal salivation. Later than all this happened to the killers. The shoulder master never saw a criminal spit before execution, starting from the moment when he came to prepare him for execution.

Let me cite an incident that the captain of the ship himself told me where it happened, and which is one more piece of evidence.

There was a theft on one royal frigate before the revolution. Since the frigate was on the high seas, everyone understood that the criminal was on board. Despite the strictest search, despite the fact that everyone on the ship lives as one family and knows everything about each other, neither the officers nor the sailors could find the thief. The whole team was looking for him. When the captain and his assistants despaired of finding the culprit, the chief officer said, "Tomorrow morning I'll tell you who the thief is."

Everyone was very surprised. The next morning, the chief mate lined up the entire crew on deck and announced that he would be looking for the criminal. He ordered everyone to offer their hand and poured a little flour into each palm. Then he told the sailors to moisten the flour with saliva and roll it into a ball. One sailor could not do this: he did not have saliva in his mouth.

"Here's a criminal," said the senior mate to the captain.

And he was not wrong.

These observations and facts show how important the nature of Slime is; its excess is secreted through the organs of taste, gastric juice mainly consists of mucus, this clever chemist, which our laboratories cannot keep up with. Doctors will tell you that the most serious, the longest, the most severe from the first day of illness are those associated with inflammation of the mucous membrane. Finally, rhinitis, colloquially referred to as the common cold, deprives us of our most precious abilities for several days, although it is only a slight irritation of the mucous membranes of the nose and brain.

In any case, the smoker impedes this circulation by destroying its drain pipe, weakening the activity of the papillae, or causing them to absorb the juices that close the hole. Therefore, while a smoker smokes, he is in a dope all the time. Smoking peoples, such as the Dutch, who were the first in Europe to become addicted to smoking, are mostly lethargic and lethargic, the population of Holland is growing slowly. Fish, pickles and a very strong Touraine wine, Vouvray wine, which the Dutch consume in excess, fights the influence of tobacco; but Holland will always belong to the first conqueror; it survives only through the envy of other states, which will never allow France to get its hands on it. Finally, smoking or chewing tobacco has local effects that are also worth mentioning. The enamel on the teeth is gradually destroyed, the gums swell, pus begins to ooze from them, which mixes with food and poisons saliva.

The Turks, who do not know the limits in the consumption of tobacco, weakening its effect by leaching, lose their male power early. Since there are few Turks rich enough to own famous seraglios where they can waste their youth, it remains to be assumed that the main causes of the loss of the ability to procreate, when a thirty-year-old Turk is like a fifty-year-old European, are tobacco, opium and coffee - these three similar stimulants. The climate here does not play a special role: these are not so far latitudes from us. In addition, the ability to procreate is a criterion of vitality and is closely related to the state of mucous secretions.

In this regard, I know one secret experience that I want to make public in the interests of science and the state. A very nice lady loved her husband only when he was at a respectful distance from her - an extremely rare case and worthy of special mention - but did not know how to keep him away from her without violating the authority of the Code. ...without violating the authority of the Code.- That is, not getting divorced, because divorce was not provided for by the Civil Code, adopted in 1804.. Her husband was an old sailor who smoked like a steamer ... She began to observe his love impulses and noticed that on those days when, due to some circumstances, her husband smoked fewer cigars than usual, he was, as they say, bigots , more loving. She continued her observations and found that love breaks were directly related to tobacco use. Fifty cigars or cigarettes (he came up to such a number) brought her peace of mind, all the more desirable because the sailor belonged to the ruined family of knights of the old regime. Delighted with her own discovery, she allowed him to chew tobacco, a habit he had once sacrificed for her sake. After three years of chewing tobacco, smoking pipes, cigars and cigarettes combined, she became one of the happiest women in the kingdom. She had a spouse, but no marital obligations.

"The habit of chewing tobacco gives us power over the crew," one captain of a ship, distinguished by extraordinary powers of observation, told me.

§ V. Conclusions

The authorities are unlikely to agree with these considerations regarding stimulants, which they themselves have imposed on us; but my views are justified, and I dare say that the Germans owe much of their calmness to the pipe: it frees a person from excessive energy. The IRS is inherently stupid The IRS is, by its very nature, stupid...- The state monopoly on the sale of tobacco, which existed in France since the 17th century and was abolished in 1791, was fully restored in 1811. and harmful to society, she is ready to plunge the country into the abyss of dementia for the pleasure of shifting the crown from one hand to the other, as Indian jugglers do.

In our day, all strata show a propensity for drunkenness; moralists and statesmen should fight it, because drunkenness, in whatever form it manifests itself, slows down the development of society. Vodka and tobacco are a serious threat to modern society. Looking at the London palaces where they drink gin, you begin to appreciate the society of sobriety.

Brillat-Savarin, one of the first to notice the influence of what enters the human mouth on human destinies, could defend the benefits of statistics and try to give it a worthy place, placing it at the basis of the activity of great minds. Statistics must become the budget of things, they can shed light on the serious questions that modern excesses raise about the future of nations.

Wine, that aphrodisiac of the lower classes, contains noxious substances; but at least it takes him some time, depending on the physique, to completely destroy a person; cases when it exerts its destructive effect instantly are extremely rare.

As regards sugar, France has been deprived of it for a long time, and I know that the diseases of the lungs which afflicted the generation born between 1800 and 1815, with a frequency that surprised medical statisticians, may be attributed to this deprivation, while its excessive consumption causes skin diseases.

Undoubtedly, alcohol, which is the basis of wines and drinks, which most of the French abuse, coffee, which is very patrician, sugar, which contains phosphorescent substances and phlogiston and is consumed in excessive quantities, should change the conditions of procreation, now that science has proven that the fish diet affects the offspring.

The authorities, perhaps, are more immoral than chance, more vicious, bring more harm to society than Roulette. Vodka is harmful, and its sale must be monitored. The peoples are big children, and politics should take care of them as a mother. The nutrition of the people as a whole is a huge and most neglected part of politics, dare I even say that it is in its infancy.

These five kinds of excesses lead to similar results: thirst, sweat, poverty of mucous secretions and, consequently, loss of the ability to procreate. Let this axiom enter into human science:

VII. Any excess that affects the mucous membrane shortens life.

Man has a totality of vital force which is equally divided between the circulation of blood, phlegm and nervous substance; when one substance absorbs another, a person is one-third dead. Finally, in order to sum up, we formulate an axiom:

VIII. When France sends her five hundred thousandth army to the Pyrenees, she has no one to send to the Rhine. It's the same with a person.

Guidebooks warn of many dangers that may await travelers in a particular country. But no one warns about cannibalism. Surprise! Cannibalism is still practiced in some tribes such as India, Cambodia and West Africa. And here are 7 countries in which tribes are still not averse to feasting on people.

South East Papua New Guinea

The Korowai tribe is one of the last on Earth to regularly feed on human flesh. They live along the river, and there have been cases when they killed random tourists. And the healers considered warm brains a real delicacy.

Why do they eat people? When someone in the tribe dies for no apparent reason (illness or old age), they consider it a trick of black magic and, in order to save others from harm, they must eat the person.

Interesting fact: In 1961, Michael Rockefeller (son of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller) disappeared while collecting artifacts about the tribe. His body was never found.

India

The northern Indian Hindu sect, the Aghori, eats volunteers who donate their innards. However, in 2005, Indian television crews investigated and learned that they also eat decaying corpses from the Ganges (a local tradition) and also steal organs from crematoria.

Why do they eat people?

Aghori believe that this prevents the aging of the body.

Interesting fact: They make really good jewelry out of human bones and skulls.

Fiji

Formerly known as "Cannibal Island". Until now, local residents cannot restore order, and there are still those who eat human flesh, but not all, but only enemy tribes.

Why do they eat people? This is a revenge ritual.

Interesting fact: Fijian cannibals are not animals at all - they eat with cutlery and collect rare items left over from their victims. In the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, you can find examples of such collections.

Brazil

The Wari tribe ate the pious and religious dead until 1960, and after that some state missionaries massacred almost the entire tribe. However, poverty levels in the slums of Olinda have been prohibitively high since 1994, and there are still outbreaks of cannibalism.

Why do they eat people? Poverty and hunger.

Interesting fact: In 2012, there was information from researchers who interviewed local residents, and they claimed to hear voices that tell them to kill this or that person.

West Africa

The society of active cannibals Leopard has been eating people since the last century. Until the 80s, human remains were found in the vicinity of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire. The tribe is usually dressed in leopard skins and armed with their fangs.

Why do they eat people? The tribe believes that eating humans makes them stronger and faster.

Interesting fact: They have followers - the Human Alligator community, which is doing this.

Cambodia

Journalist Neil Davis reported that cannibalism in these regions gained momentum during the wars in Southeast Asia (in the 1960s and 1970s). Nowadays, manifestations of cannibalism are occasionally observed.

Why do they eat people? The Cambodian troops had a ritual - to eat the enemy's liver.

Interesting fact: Many people in cities and villages were under the control of the Khmer Rouge organization, which strictly controlled all food in the area and artificially created famine in the country.

Congo

There are cases of cannibalism in the Congo, and the last ones were recorded not so long ago - in 2012. They reached their maximum during the Congolese civil war (from 1998 to 2002).

Why do they eat people? During the war, the rebel factions believed that enemies should be eaten, especially the heart, which was cooked using special herbs.

Interesting fact: The Congolese still believe that the human heart gives special strength, and if there are people, it will scare away enemies.

Treatise on modern stimulants

Any excess that affects the mucous membrane shortens life.

7th axiom

§ I. Statement of the question

1. Vodka or alcohol, the basis of all liqueurs that appeared in the last years of the reign of Louis XIV and were invented in order to warm his chilly old age.

2. Sugar. This substance only recently appeared on the table of the masses, as the French industry learned to produce it in large quantities and sell it at the price it had, until it became rare and rose in price. This price will, of course, fall even further, despite the efforts of the tax administration, which is just waiting to tax it.

3. Tea, known for fifty years.

4. Coffee. Although the Arabs discovered it long ago, in Europe this aphrodisiac has been widely used since the middle of the eighteenth century.

5. Tobacco, the use of which, by means of burning, has become universal and excessive only since peace reigned in France.

First of all, let us consider the question from the most exalted point of view.

I. For a person to live in society means to spend himself more quickly or less quickly.

Nature requires that all organs take an equal part in the life of a person, while society intensifies in people the thirst for this or that pleasure, and the satisfaction of this thirst leads to the concentration in this or that organ of a large part, and often even all of the force; these surges of power come at the expense of all the other organs and deprive them of just as much as the gourmet organs consume. Hence the disease and, ultimately, the reduction of life. This theory is terrible in its reliability, like all theories based on facts, and not put forward a priori. Constant mental activity causes increased work of the brain, the force is concentrated there, stretches its delicate shell, enriches its pulp: but it devastates the lower floor so much that a disease of genius is in wait for a disease decently called frigidity in medicine. On the contrary, if you spend your life at the legs of sofas on which endlessly charming women reclined, if you fall in love bravely, you will become dumb as a Franciscan friar. The mind loses the ability to rise to higher spheres of knowledge. True strength lies between these two excesses. Leading a life of intelligence and love at the same time, a man of genius dies, as Raphael and Lord Byron died. The chaste person dies from excess of work, just as the voluptuary from debauchery; but this kind of death is extremely rare. The abuse of tobacco, coffee, opium and vodka cause serious disorders and lead to early death. An organ that is constantly irritated, stuffed endlessly, hypertrophies: it grows to an abnormal size, suffers and destroys the organism, which eventually cannot stand and dies.

According to the current laws, everyone is his own master. But if the citizens who have the right to be elected, as well as the proletarians who read these lines, believe that they only harm themselves when they smoke like a tugboat, or drink like Alexander, then, strangely enough, they are mistaken; their behavior destroys posterity and entails degeneration, which leads to the devastation of the country. One generation has no right to harm another.

II. Nutrition is a continuation of the family.

Have this axiom carved in golden letters in your mess halls. It is strange that Brillat-Savarin, having demanded from science to increase the number of senses at the expense of the sense of procreation, forgot to note the connection that exists between what a person produces and substances that can change the conditions of his life. With what pleasure I should have read the following axiom from him:

III. Those who eat fish give birth to girls, those who eat meat give birth to boys, those who eat bread give birth to thinkers.

The man who ate only chocolate died eight months later.

A man who ate only coffee lived for two years.

A man who ate only tea lasted for three whole years.

I suspect that the East India Company has achieved this experiment in their own interests.

A man who ate chocolate rotted alive, eaten by worms. Its members died one by one, like members of the Spanish royal family.

In France, an experiment was carried out with sugar.

In many mechanical things, aimed at giving a person pleasure, the inhabitants of the East are much higher than Europeans: their contemplation, akin to the habit of toads, which sit for a long time without moving, opening their golden eyes, like two suns, to nature, allowed them to see in reality what what we learn through scientific analysis. The detrimental basis of coffee is tannin, a harmful substance that has not yet been sufficiently studied by chemists. When the lining of the stomach is exposed to tannin, or when the tannic properties of coffee have dulled its sensitivity through frequent use, it ceases to shrink sharply, and this is precisely what the toilers seek. Hence, if the lover does not refuse coffee, serious malfunctions occur. There is a man in London whose intemperate use of coffee has twisted him into a gnarled, old man with gout. In Paris I knew an engraver who took five years to recover from the state to which his addiction to coffee had brought him. Finally, recently, one artist - his name was Shenavar - simply burned alive. He went into a cafe the way a worker goes into a tavern - every now and then. Coffee lovers do the same as all people who are seized by some kind of passion; they go further and further and, like Nicolet's, they rise higher and higher, to the point of abuse. By crushing coffee beans, you spray them into strange shaped molecules; the aroma is released, and the tannin remains in them. That is why Italians, Venetians, Greeks and Turks can, without any danger to themselves, incessantly drink coffee, which the French contemptuously call coffee. Voltaire drank this coffee.

V. Leaving coffee in contact with boiling water, especially for a long time, is heresy; to cook it in water with coffee grounds means to expose your stomach and other organs to tanning.

II. If we talk about coffee prepared with the help of an immortal coffee pot in the de Bellois method, and not du Bellois (the one whose reflections we are indebted to this ecumenical method was a cousin of the cardinal and, like him, came from an ancient noble family of the marquises de Bellois), then coffee has more strength when it is poured with cold water than when it is brewed with boiling water. This is the second way to enhance its impact.

When you grind coffee, it releases aroma and tannin at the same time, which delights the palate and stimulates the nerve plexus that affects thousands of brain cells.

Thus, there are two stages: Turkish coffee grounds and ground coffee.

III. The strength of coffee depends on how much coffee is poured into the upper vessel, on how much it is rubbed, and on how much water is poured, which is the third way to make coffee.

Another week you pour cold water into the coffee, grind the coffee, grind the powder and reduce the amount of water, thereby again achieving the same dose of mental energy.

Finally, I discovered a terrible and cruel way, which I can only advise people who are extremely powerful, with black coarse hair, with ocher-red skin, with strong arms, with legs as strong as the balustrade posts in the Place Louis XV. We are talking about the use of ground coffee on an empty stomach, pounded cold anhydride (a chemical term for the complete or almost complete absence of water). Coffee enters your stomach, which, as you know from Brillat-Savarin, is a velvety pouch covered with papillae and tubercles; your stomach is empty, and it pounces on these tender sweet walls, taking the place of food, hungry for their juices; he draws juices, he conjures them, as a soothsayer conjures her god, he does not spare these wonderful walls, like a driver who mercilessly whips frisky horses; the nerve plexuses become inflamed, they burn, and sparks from them fly to the very brain. From that moment on, everything starts to move: thoughts form up like battalions of the Napoleonic army before a battle, and here the battle is actually played out. Memories, unfolding banners, rush to the attack; the light cavalry of comparison gallops; the artillery of logic rushes to the rescue with their guns and charging caps; witticisms fly like arrows; figurative expressions appear; the paper is streaked with ink, for the vigil begins and ends with streams of black goo, like a battle with black powder.

§ IV. About tobacco

It was not for nothing that I left tobacco to last, firstly, this excess appeared last, and besides, it prevails over the rest.

Nature has put limits on our pleasures. God forbid me to define here the fighting qualities of love and hurt the feelings of the respectable public; but it is irrefutably proved that the glory of Hercules was brought by his twelfth labor, which today, when women suffer much more from the smoke of cigars than from the fire of love, is considered legendary. Everyone gets bored with sweets very quickly, even children. Abuse of strong drinks allows you to live no more than two years; Abuse of coffee leads to diseases that make you say goodbye to it. As for smoking, it seems to a person that he can smoke indefinitely. But he is delusional. Brousset, a heavy smoker, had Herculean powers; if he had not worked so much and smoked so much, he would have lived to be a hundred years old: he recently died, and given his cyclopean build, we can say that he died in the prime of life. Finally, one dandy, who sinned with tobacco worship as a god, received an infection of the throat, and since it was absolutely impossible to remove it, he died.

Tobacco smoking causes severe dizziness at first; in most of the neophytes, it causes profuse salivation, as well as nausea and vomiting. Despite such behavior of an indignant nature, the tobacco fan does not give up, he tries to get used to it. Hard learning sometimes lasts for several months. The smoker eventually wins Mithridates' victory and experiences heavenly bliss. What is another name for the effects of tobacco? The poor man does not doubt for a second what to choose: bread or smoke; a young man who does not have a single sous in his pocket, wandering around the boulevards all day and making his mistress work day and night, also chooses a cigar without hesitation; the Corsican bandit you meet in the forbidding cliffs or on the far-reaching shallows is ready to rid you of your enemy for a pound of tobacco. People in power admit that cigars console them in their greatest misfortunes. A dandy would never part with a cigar, even for the sake of the woman he loves, just as a convict would prefer to stay in the galleys if they gave him plenty of tobacco there! What power does this pleasure have over us, for which the king of kings would give half of his possessions and which, above all, comforts the unfortunate? I denied this enjoyment and advanced the following axiom:

VI. To smoke a cigar is to smoke fire.

I owe the key to this treasure to George Sand. But I only allow Indian hookah or Persian narghile. Indeed, in material enjoyment, Eastern people are much superior to us.

The smoker stops salivating. And if it does not stop, then it completely changes, turning into a denser mass. Finally, if he never spits out saliva, he thereby clogs the vessels, clogs or destroys taste buds, drain pipes, ingenious tubercles, the delightful mechanism of which belongs to the area examined by Raspail with a microscope, and descriptions of which, in my opinion, are perfect needed, I'm looking forward to.

The path of various mucous secretions, the wonderful pulp located between the blood and nerves, is one of the most ingenious human circulations invented by the great watchmaker, to whom we owe an inventive joke called Humanity. The mediator between blood and its main product, on which the future of the human race is based, these mucous secretions are so important for the internal harmony of our body that strong experiences cause us an acute need for them in order to withstand a blow to some unknown center. Finally, they are so necessary in life that all those who have come into a great rage can remember how their throat suddenly dried up, saliva thickened and how it then slowly returned to its normal state. This phenomenon struck me so strongly that I wanted to test it in the area of the most terrible impressions. I got ahead of time an invitation to dinner in the company of people whom decency makes outcasts: the head of the detective police and the executioner of the Royal Court of Paris, however, both of them are citizens, voters and have the same rights as all other Frenchmen.

Let me cite an incident that the captain of the ship himself told me where it happened, and which is one more piece of evidence.

"Here's a criminal," said the senior mate to the captain.

And he was not wrong.

In this regard, I know one secret experience that I want to make public in the interests of science and the state. A very nice lady loved her husband only when he was at a respectful distance from her - an extremely rare case and worthy of special mention - but did not know how to keep him away from her without violating the authority of the Code. Her husband was an old sailor who smoked like a steamer ... She began to observe his love impulses and noticed that on those days when, due to some circumstances, her husband smoked fewer cigars than usual, he was, as they say, bigots , more loving. She continued her observations and found that love breaks were directly related to tobacco use. Fifty cigars or cigarettes (he came up to such a number) brought her peace of mind, all the more desirable because the sailor belonged to the ruined family of knights of the old regime. Delighted with her own discovery, she allowed him to chew tobacco, a habit he had once sacrificed for her sake. After three years of chewing tobacco, smoking pipes, cigars and cigarettes combined, she became one of the happiest women in the kingdom. She had a spouse, but no marital obligations.

"The habit of chewing tobacco gives us power over the crew," one captain of a ship, distinguished by extraordinary powers of observation, told me.

§ V. Conclusions

The authorities are unlikely to agree with these considerations regarding stimulants, which they themselves have imposed on us; but my views are justified, and I dare say that the Germans owe much of their calmness to the pipe: it frees a person from excessive energy. The Tax Office is by nature stupid and harmful to society, it is ready to plunge the country into the abyss of dementia for the pleasure of shifting the crown from one hand to the other, as Indian jugglers do.

These five kinds of excesses lead to similar results: thirst, sweat, poverty of mucous secretions and, consequently, loss of the ability to procreate. Let this axiom enter into human science:

VII. Any excess that affects the mucous membrane shortens life.

VIII. When France sends her five hundred thousandth army to the Pyrenees, she has no one to send to the Rhine. It's the same with a person.