Dont vient jaunisse, ictericie
Appoplexie,
Epilencie,
Et squinancie?
Tout vient de mal garder la bouche.”
In quaint old French all the symptoms of alcoholism are perfectly enumerated. It is evident that the epilepsy mentioned by the author is only the epileptiform convulsion noticed in modern cases of chronic drunkenness.
As to the ictericie, which a modern critic has translated as meaning black humor, it is nothing more than what is now known as cirrhosis of the liver. Nicole de la Chesnaye was a physician; his critical commentator not much of one. We cannot follow this classical author through the innumerable reasons he gives for blaming liquor drinking and his high tributes of praise to the cause of Middle Age temperance, and we cannot quote those original strophes on the ancient satirical poet:
“Le satirique Juvenal
Avoit bien tout cousidere.
Quand il dist qu’il vient tant de mal