Medicine: For Thy Stomach's Sake

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To winebibbing Frenchmen it was heresy, or worse, when eminent physicians suggested that the French are getting too much of a good thing (TIME, June 16). So members of the government's High Committee for Study and Information on Alcoholism, chosen in 1954 "for their independence, their authority, and their knowledge of the problem,'' knew just what was expected of them. Last week the gist of the committee's 223-page report leaked to the press. To nobody's surprise, it was heartily in favor of wine.

Bordeaux University's Professor Jean Ribérau-Gayon contributed such items as: "The richness of the grape in vitamins of group B has not been stressed sufficiently. Commercial wine is considerably richer in vitamins than commercial grape juice of the same vintage." (Bordeaux happens to be synonymous with claret and sauterne.) Another Bordeaux University professor, Jacques Masquelier, got carried away with the results of some sophomoric experiments. He concluded that claret is on a par with penicillin as a germ killer, hinted that it might be better because it slaughters staphylococci, many strains of which are now resistant to penicillin.

Other committee members attacked the bugaboo of cirrhosis of the liver, managed to convince themselves that it was a greatly exaggerated hazard, because in a sampling at a big Paris hospital. 35% of the cirrhosis victims survived the disease. Somehow, this struck the committee as more significant than the fact that almost twice as many died.

What separated the men from the boys was the definition of moderation. "To many Frenchmen," said the committee, "to drink moderately means to absorb two, three or four liters of wine a day." The Academy of Medicine suggested that one liter (1.0567 U.S. liquid quarts) should be enough, but the committee went further, urged that nobody exceed a liter a day.

On one point there was no argument: the frugal French are most frugal with water. In the villages, the committee found, "water is employed with parsimony." But wine keeps flowing at the same rate even when the price goes up.