The Physiology of Taste (31 page)

64: While I have the doctors here at my mercy, I do not wish to leave off without reproaching them for the extreme severity which they use toward their patients.

From the minute that one has the misfortune to fall into their hands, they submit him to a procession of prohibitions, and make him renounce everything enjoyable in his daily habits.

I protest against most of these interdictions as useless.

I say
useless
, because sick people almost never benefit from what is unpleasant to them.

A sensible doctor must never lose sight of the natural tendency of our preferences, nor forget that if painful sensations are depressing by their very nature, those which are agreeable lead perforce toward our well-being. It has often been seen how a
little wine, a sip of coffee, or a few drops of liqueur will bring back a smile to the face of the most hopeless invalid.

What is more, they must surely understand, these stern tyrants, that their prescriptions are almost always futile; the patient does what he can to avoid them; his relatives are never at a loss for excuses to humor him, and he does not die any the sooner or later for it.

The daily liquor ration of a sick Russian soldier in 1815 would have knocked out a bully from the Paris markets, and that of the English would have set even a Limousin
⁵
back on his heels. And it was impossible for anyone to avoid his full portion, since military inspectors bustled ceaselessly through our hospitals, keeping an eye on both the issue and the consumption of such rations.

I stick to my opinion about this system of prescribing with all the more confidence since it is bolstered by numerous facts, and since the most successful doctors are inclined to agree with it.

Canon Rollet, who died about fifty years ago, was a real drinker, as was the custom in those bygone days. He once fell ill, and the first words the doctor spoke to him were to forbid him to touch any more wine. However, at the physician’s next visit he found the patient in bed, and beside it an almost perfect example of incriminating evidence: a table covered with a fine white cloth, a crystal goblet, a handsome wine bottle, and a napkin for drying the culprit’s lips.

At this sight he fell into a violent fit of anger, and was threatening to wash his hands of the case, when the unhappy canon cried out in a mournful voice, “But, Doctor! Remember, please, that when you forbade me to drink, you at least did not forbid me the pleasure of looking at the bottle!”

The physician who treated Monsieur de Montlucin, of Pont-de-Veyle, was even harsher in his methods, for not only did he prohibit the use of wine to his patient, but he told him to drink plain water in large doses.

A short while after the departure of the tyrant, Madame de Montlucin, eager to carry out the orders and to hasten the recovery of her husband, presented him with a large glass of the most limpidly pure water.

The invalid took it docilely, and set himself with resignation to drinking it; but after the first swallow he stopped, and handed the glass back to his wife: “Take it, my dear,” he said, “and keep it for some other time: I’ve always heard it said that one must never run the risk of an overdose of any kind of medicine.”

65: In the gastronomical empire, the position of men of letters is very close to that of the doctors.

During the reign of Louis XIV, writers were drunkards; they but followed the fashion, and the memoirs of that period are very edifying on the subject. Today writers are gourmands, which is a great improvement.

I am far from being of the opinion of the cynic Geoffroy,
⁶
who once said that if modern literature lacks force it is because the authors drink only sugar water.

I believe, on the contrary, that he has done a double injustice, and is mistaken both in the fact itself and in its results.

This present period is rich in talents; they perhaps do themselves harm by their very numbers; but posterity, looking at it more dispassionately, will find much to admire in it: thus it is that we ourselves have recognized the masterpieces of Racine and Moliére, which were coldly received by their contemporaries.

Never has the social position of men of letters been pleasanter than now. They no longer live in the remote garrets which used to embarrass them; the fields of literature have grown more fertile for them, and even the Hippocrenic stream flows over gold dust; the equals of anyone, they no longer need cringe to the voice of patronage; and, to crown it all, gourmandism overwhelms them with her finest favors.

We associate with men of letters because of our respect for their talents, because in general their conversation has something piquant about it, and also because it has been fashionable for some time now for each social set to have its own author.

These gentlemen always arrive a little late; the result is that they are welcomed all the more heartily, having been waited for; they are tempted with the daintiest tidbits so that they will
return some other time for more, and they are plied with the best wines so that they will sparkle while they are there: since they accept all this as their due, they soon grow used to it, and become gourmands forever.

In fact, this state of affairs has advanced almost to the point of becoming a little scandalous. More than one ferrety gossip has whispered that certain literary lions have been seduced at the dinner table, that certain advancements are the result of this or that truffled pâté, in short that the lock of the temple of immortality has been picked with a fork. But this is nothing but mischievous slander; these rumors have died away with all the others: what has been done has been well done, and naturally the only reason I mention it here at all is to show that I keep abreast of whatever is connected with my subject.
⁷

66: Last of all, gourmandism counts many of the devout among its most faithful followers.

We give to this word
devout
the same meaning as did Louis XIV and Molière, that is as it is applied to the men of the cloth whose whole religion consists of outward observances; people of true piety and charity have no part of it.

Let us see, then, how they have come to join the church. Among those who wish to make this move, most choose the easiest way to do it; the ones who shun their fellowmen, sleep upon stone, and drape themselves with haircloth, have always been exceptions and will always be so.

There are, of course, some things in life which are unequivocably damned, and which can nevermore be enjoyed once the vows are taken, like dancing, the theater, gambling, and other such pastimes.

But while all these things as well as the people who practice them are abominated, gourmandism appears and insinuates itself with a completely theological reasonableness into the monkish picture.

By divine right man is the king of nature, it is argued, and everything that the earth produces has been created for his use.
It is for him that the quail fattens, for him that mocha has so sweet a perfume, for him that sugar is beneficial to the health.

Why not, then, take advantage, at least with a proper moderation, of the good things that Providence offers to him, especially if he continues to think of them as fleeting and perishable, and even more especially if they intensify his gratitude toward the author of all beings!

And even stronger reasons serve to strengthen these first ones. How can anyone do too much to welcome the men who direct our souls and keep us on the straight and narrow path? Should we not make any such admirably intended meetings as pleasant as possible, and more frequent?

Sometimes, too, the gifts of Comus arrive without being solicited: it may be a souvenir of old school days, it may be a present from a faithful friend or from a penitent in apology, it may be something in payment of a bargain already made, or an offering from a debtor. How can such boons be spurned? And how can we ignore the rules of reciprocity, and not return their worth? It is a matter of pure necessity.

What is more, things have always been like this:

Nunneries in the old days were veritable storehouses of the most delectable tidbits, which is why some connoisseurs feel so bitterly about the edicts closing their doors.
*

Several monastic orders, the Bernardine especially, made a profession of good living. Cooks employed by the cloth surpassed the limits of their own art; and when Monsieur de Pressigny (who died archbishop of Besançon) returned from the conclave which elected Pius VI in 1775, he said that the best dinner offered to him in all Rome was at the table of the head of the Capuchins.

67: There can be no better way for us to finish this Meditation than to make honorable mention of two classes of gourmands which we have watched in all their glory, and which the Revolution has wiped out: the chevaliers and the abbés.

And what gourmands they were, those good old friends! It was impossible to ignore the evidence of their flaring nostrils, their popping eyes, their glistening lips and their licking tongue-tips; and yet each class had a way of eating which was peculiar to it.

The chevaliers showed something military in the way they sat; they apportioned their mouthfuls with dignity, and chewed them with great calm, the while they looked tranquilly about the table, from host to hostess, with a horizontal and approving gaze.

The abbés, on the contrary, hunched themselves to be nearer their plates; their right hands curved around their forks like the paw of a cat who flicks hot chestnuts from a fire; their faces shone with pleasure, and their glance had something about it of pure concentration which is easier to imagine than to paint.

Since three-quarters of the present generation have never seen anything to resemble the chevaliers and the abbés whom I have just described, and since it is nevertheless necessary to be able to recognize them in order to understand many books written during the eighteenth century, we shall borrow from the author of
AN HISTORICAL TREATISE ON DUELLING
a few pages which can leave nothing to be desired on this subject. (See the “Varieties,” number XX.)

68: As a result of my preceding lectures, I am happier than I imagined possible to be able to give to my readers a wonderful bit of news, which is that good living is far from being destructive to good health and that, all things being equal, gourmands live much longer than other folk. This has been mathematically proven in a very well-constructed essay which was read just lately at the Academy of Sciences by Dr. Villermet.

In it he compared the various levels of well-nourished society
with those that are badly fed, and ran their gamut in his study. In this scale of comparisons he noted those parts of Paris where the standard of living is generally high and, in the same category, those which are completely opposite, as for example the suburb of Saint-Marceau and the Chaussée-d’Antin.

In conclusion the doctor extended his researches to the outer fringes of France and compared, under the same subject heading, those which are more and less fertile: without fail he discerned that human mortality diminishes in direct proportion to the ability to nourish the population properly, and also that those people who are condemned by fate to be malnourished may at least comfort themselves with the assurance that they will be released by death sooner than their fat brothers.

The two extremes of this situation are that only one man in fifty who lives well dies in a single year, whereas among those who are most exposed to misery one out of four dies in the same period of time.

This is not because men who live an easy life can not fall ill! Alas, they do wander at times into the domain of the doctors, who have the habit of classifying them as
good patients
; but since they have a greater reserve of vitality, and since every part of their organism is better cared for, Nature itself has more resources, and their bodies are incomparably better prepared to resist disintegration.

This physiological truth has all the more weight when we remember that every time some imperious circumstance like a war, or a siege, or a violent change in weather, has lessened our means of survival, the resulting state of distressful malnutrition has always been accompanied by epidemics of contagious diseases and a great increase in mortality.

The Lafarge insurance company, so well-known to Parisians, would without doubt have flourished if those who established it had let Dr. Villermet’s truths enter into their calculations.

They figured the mortality rate according to the tables established by Buffon, Parcieux, and others, all of them fixed on numbers drawn from all classes and all ages of a certain population. But since men who are able to place their capital according to its probable revenue are in general able as well to escape the
dangers of childhood, and are used to a well-ordered, proper, and even enjoyable existence,
death passed them by
, the speculators’ hopes were deceived, and the whole scheme fell through.

This was, of course, not the only reason for the failure, but it was a basic one, and it was told to me by my friend Professor Pardessus.

Monsieur de Belloy, archbishop of Paris, who lived nearly a hundred years, had a fairly hearty appetite; he loved good living, and more than once I have seen his patriarchal figure come to life at the arrival of a plate of distinction. Napoleon never failed, on every occasion, to show him deference.

1.
There is a note about Dr. Gall at the end of Meditation 2. As for Johann Kaspar Lavater, he was a Swiss preacher and writer who was born in 1741 and died in 1801. His main work was a series of treatises and essays on physiognomy, or the art of judging character from facial characteristics.