Free The Physiology of Taste by Anthelme Jean Brillat-Savarin Page A

knowledge. But I shall reveal to the whole of Paris
(here I draw myself up)
, to all of France
(I swell with oratorical rage)
, to the Universe itself, your only fault!
    FRIEND (
gravely)
—And what is that, may I ask?
    AUTHOR —An habitual vice, which all my exhortations have not corrected.
    FRIEND
(horrified
)—Tell me! Don’t torture me like this!
    AUTHOR —You eat too fast! †
    [HERE THE FRIEND PICKS UP HIS HAT , AND EXITS SMILING , FAIRLY WELL CONVINCED THAT HE HAD MADE A CONVERT.]
    * M. de Montucla, known for an excellent HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS , also wrote a DICTIONARY OF GASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY .
    * The reader in French must have noticed by now that my friend lets himself be thee-and-thou’d without reciprocating. This is because I am old enough to be his father, and because he would be very much upset if I changed, in spite of his having become a figure of considerable reputation in his own right.
    * Belley, capital of the district of Bugey, a charming countryside with high mountains, hills, rivers, limpid brooks, waterfalls, chasms … a true “English garden” of a hundred square leagues, and where, before the Revolution, the Third Estate held, by the local constitution, the power of veto over the other two orders.
    † Historical.

A BIOGRAPHY
OF DR. RICHERAND
    THE DOCTOR INTRODUCED in the preceding Dialogue is far from being some such creature of fantasy as a mythical Chloris, but is rather a living, breathing, handsome man; and whoever knows me will already have recognized in him my friend Dr. Richerand.
    As I was writing about him, my mind went back to men who came before his time, and I realized with pride that the district around Belley, my birthplace in the Department of the Ain, has for a long time given to Paris, the capital of the world, some doctors of great distinction. I could not resist the temptation of raising a modest monument to them, here in this short sketch.
    During the Regency, Genin and Civoct were physicians of the highest standing, and poured an honestly acquired fortune back into their native soil. The first was completely hippocratic, ethical in the extreme; the second, whose patients included a large number of beautiful ladies, was much milder and more accommodating …
res novas molientem
, as Tacitus put it.
    Toward 1750, Dr. La Chapelle distinguished himself in the dangerous career of military medicine. He left several useful books on the subject, and we owe to him the introduction of the treatment of inflammations of the chest with fresh butter, a method which works miracles when it is employed within the first thirty-six hours of the attack. 1
    About 1760, Dr. Dubois 2 had great success in the treatment of the vapors, a disorder very fashionable at that time, quite as popular as the nervous breakdowns which have replaced it! His stylish reputation is all the more astonishing when I recall that he was far from handsome …
    Unhappily, he accumulated a fat fortune too early in life.He fell into the clutches of his own laziness, and seemed quite content to devote himself to being a charming dinner guest and a wholly amusing conversationalist. He was a sturdy fellow, and lived more than eighty-eight years, in spite of, or rather because of, the dinner parties of both the old and the new
régimes
. *
    Toward the end of the reign of Louis XV, Dr. Coste, a native of Châtillon, came to Paris. He brought with him a letter of introduction from Voltaire to the Duke of Choiseul, whose patronage he was lucky enough to win from his very first visit.
    Coste rose fast, thanks to the Duke’s protection and that of his sister the Duchess of Grammont, and within a few years Paris counted the doctor among its most promising physicians.
    The same protection which had so helped his climb dragged him away from his easy, profitable career, to put him at the head of the health service in the army which France sent to the United States, which were then fighting for their freedom.
    Dr. Coste