“Si Bourdaloue[10] un peu severe
Nous dit: craignez la volupté
Escobar[10], lui dit on mon pere
Nous la permet pour la santé!”
If Bourdaloue, somewhat severe,
Warns us to dread voluptuous sweets,
Good honest father Escobar,
To fuddle for one’s health permits.
And, by the bye, if the number of physicians, who used to get drunk, proves any thing, I could insert a good round catalogue, amongst whom I do not find any English doctors, for they are the most abstemious persons in the world; however, being unwilling to trouble my gentle reader with so long a bead-roll, I shall instance only two very illustrious topers of the faculty. The first is no less a man than the great Paracelsus, who used to get drunk very often; and the other is the famous master Dr. Francis Rabelais, who took a singular pleasure to moisten his clay; or to make use of one of his own expressions, Humer le piot.
I could, after these, mention Patin[11], who tells us, That when he gave his public entertainment for his decanat, or deanship, at which thirty-six of his colleagues assisted, he never saw in all his life so much toping. From all which, however, one may very reasonably infer, that so many able persons would never have drunk so much, had they not thought it was no ways prejudicial to their health.