[143] ] Of Ay, Avenay, and Hautvillers (note of Tallemant’s editor).
[144] ] Tallemant des Réaux’s Historiettes.
[145] ] Champagne has been accused of producing not only gout, but stone, gravel, and rheumatism. As to the first-named complaint, Bertin du Rocheret disposes of it by noting, in a list compiled by him of all the deaths of any moment at Epernay, from 1644 downwards, the decease, at the age of seventy-five, on January 1, 1733, of Jeanne Maillard, ‘the only person in the district ever attacked by the gout.’ His brother-in-law, Dr. Jacques de Reims, in a letter to Helvetius in 1730, asserts that this complaint is only known by name in the Champagne; and that, as regards the stone, not more than ten people were affected therewith within a radius of ten leagues. He maintained that the non-mousseux white wine of the Champagne, drunk at maturity and tempered with water, was the best of all beverages for preserving general health; and the eminent Dr. Camille Falconnet held the same opinion. Arthur Young, moreover, furnishes spontaneous testimony with regard to rheumatism. Extolling the sparkling wine of Reims in 1787, he says, ‘I suppose fixed air is good for the rheumatism; I had some writhes of it before I entered Champagne, but the vin mousseux has absolutely banished it;’ and on reaching Ove, he regrets that ‘the vin de Champagne, which is forty sous at Reims, is three livres here, and execrably bad; so there is an end of my physic for the rheumatism’ (Travels in France in 1787–9).
[146] ] An vinum Remense Burgundico suavius et salubrius.
[147] ] In his ode entitled Vinum Burgundum, the passage aspersing the wines of Reims runs as follows:
‘Nam suum Rhemi licet usque Bacchum
Jactitent: æstu petulans jocoso
Hic quidam fervet cyathis, et aura
Limpidus acri.
Vellicat nares avidas; venenum