Robert Schumann's Drinking Styles. A Perspective onto the "Wine, Women and Song" Years.

The several editions of Schumann's diaries refer us to at least two drinking styles in his university years, both of them with a flavour of "wine, women and song" fraternities. He plunged headlong into all this for a start, finding it elevating and then considering it self-medicating. He drank to excess for a while but he stopped short, unable to go further to the bitter end because he could not develop a tolerance and mostly because he was afraid of madness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]