
Gustav III of Sweden's Coffee Experiment - mmastrac
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_III_of_Sweden%27s_coffee_experiment
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eitland
Thanks for posting, this brings back happy childhood memories :

When I was a kid I used to follow my dad around the farm while he was milking
the cows and doing farm work.

He told a lot of stories like this (including the details about the doctors
and the king dying first). Other times he told me about scientific studies he
had read about etc. I can clearly remember him talking about omega3 in the mid
90ies, way before it became popular around here at least, because I remember
asking a particular teacher about it.

(He is now a teacher and enjoys it. I bet his students do too :-)

Edit: I sent the link and he just replied. He read it in a book but sadly that
book had less details, not more.

Edit 2: FWIW here is a a page from nih.gov:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5355814/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5355814/)

It to still light on the details though, and I don't have time to check all
the references now.

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emersonrsantos
As with all drugs, it's not understood the paradoxical drug effects.
Stimulants can make people sleepy, and the most potent of benzodiazepamines
can make one more agressive. The endocrine system (also the immune system) is
so complex and so full of variables and network effects that I think that
science has a long way ahead for a precise scientific understanding of all the
positive and negative effects of these drug categories.

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skinkestek
This is a really weird topic! For example, I understand that Ritalin is used
mostly as a stimulant and can be used to treat some cases of narcolepsy.

But, according to a psychiatric doctor I spoke to, some people take it to help
them fall asleep.

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raducu
I am pretty sure I have undiagnosed ADHD(its pointless getting a diagnose in
my country as an adult).

My resting heart rate is pretty high, but if I do any intelectual work
wahtsoever my heart rate is around 95bpm.

RItalin analogues(in therapeutic doses) bring my heart rate to 60bpm when
doing intelectual work while sitting on a desk -- during my deepest sleep my
heart rate is 67bpm.

My own bro-science explanation is that I compensate my ADHD with anxiety --
when I'm anxious, I can focus just fine; some stimulants allow me to focus
without the anxiety and that's why I feel deep calm and reduced heart rate
while using them.

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misterman0
I feel your bro science makes a lot of sense. I'm someone who's been
identified as being bipolar and put on Lithium, which I quickly dropped
(because it made me feel suicidal) and I instead turn to illegally acquired
cannabis, which helps me to not feel the anxiety of not yet having solved a
problem, something that these days freak the living shit out of me, if I'm not
doped up.

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no_identd
Lithium should almost certainly NOT make one suicidal when dosed correctly for
Bipolar. You might wish to explore the uses of a micronutritional form of
lithium, namely, lithium orotate, which gets metabolized in a very different
(and safer) way than pharmacological lithium.

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_0ffh
Reading it, I first thought: "Twin study, cool!"

Then I thought, "What? Two experiments, but no control group? How
disappointing!" :)

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grenoire
Considering the levels of consumption, you could assume that tea drinking is
the control!

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blaser-waffle
Three pots!

That's almost Fry-Futurama level of consumption. Couple more pots and that
test subject would have superpowers.

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duxup
>the tea drinker was the first to die, at age 83;

For being condemned criminals it sounds like they were well cared for.

Also what are the odds of finding condemned twins?

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freepor
If they committed crimes together, not hard. If things like political crimes
can be punished by death, even easier. If the king says “get me a pair of
identical twins condemned to death” very easy. Go into a poor neighborhood,
find a pair of twins and drag them in on an unsolved murder.

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codeisawesome
That's such a nauseating reality.

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lacogubik
This and more stories about origin of coffee was recently discussed in In our
Time [1] podcast from BBC.

[1]
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c4x1](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c4x1)

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antonvs
> the date of death of the surviving coffee drinker is unknown.

Apparently 3 pots of coffee a day makes you immortal.

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taneq
A simple application of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. After the third
pot, you're so focused on your velocity that your location can no longer be
determined to be in either the land of the living or the land of the dead.

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kamakazizuru
Twist: The coffee drinker is still alive

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toohotatopic
No control group without tea or coffee?

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eitland
First: remember this is 250 or so years ago.

Secondly you could say that everyone else was the control group as this king
taxed tea and coffe and later outlawed at least coffee entirely.

Edit: according to some sources it was his dad who first introduced steep
taxes on tea and coffee.

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fapjacks
This is quintessential Swedish sense of humor, the doctors AND the king dying
before either of the twins.

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zepto
Questioning the value of coffee leads to death.

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peter_d_sherman
Great Article!

You know, arguably (and I'm sure historians will differ on this!), but
arguably, this is sort of like the Swedish version of Prohibition
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States))
-- _except with Coffee_ , and except occuring in 1794, some 126 years or so
before Prohibition...

Ya know what I want to see?

Somewhere, somewhere in obscure Swedish history, there has to be a version of
the U.S.'s Boston Tea Party (1773) -- except occuring with, and solely on
behalf of, you guessed it: _Coffee_...

<g>

(Oh yeah, and to any detractors out there in the HN Community without a sense
of humor, feel free to downvote! I have enough HN Karma, I can take it! Hey,
_I_ thought it was funny! <g>)

Hmm... Maybe there should be a political party, U.S. and/or Swedish... "The
Coffee Party"... (ok, that was overstepping my bounds, yes, that would deserve
a downvote! <g>)

