France: Ma Foi! Mon Foie!

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To the average American, liver is for wurst. But to 47.6 million Frenchmen, le foie — when it is not gras — is the precious, pesky organ that regulates their lives. When a Frenchman exclaims, "Mon foie!", his cry from the gland wins instant sympathy, even in a Place de la Concorde traffic jam. Depending on whether it is swollen, too hard, too tender, congested, enrheumed or, as the French say, "intoxicated" from a surfeit of rich food, the liver is blamed for virtually every physical malfunction from ingrown toenails to inadequate amatory performance.

To assuage the Gallic gland, French men gulp some 7,000 varieties of patent medicines — notably, Les Petites Pilules Carters Pour Le Foie — as well as treating it to massage, hot baths, compresses, radioactive water, herbs, fasts, purges, exercises, and injections, naturally, of liver. Says an Anglo-Saxon doctor who has practiced for many years in Paris: "I have never examined a Frenchman who did not believe that he had liver trouble." Undoubtedly, the Frenchman's liver takes a worse beating than any other variety on earth, except that of the geese they force-feed for foie gras. The French foie not only absorbs more and richer food than most other livers; it also has to cope with the world's highest alcoholic intake. One result is that France has the world's highest death rate from cirrhosis of the liver, 31.2 per 100,000 annually, v. 11.5 in the U.S.

Crises for Cats. In most other civilized countries, the liver is rated one of the body's most rugged and efficient organs; the original protein factory, it can actually repair its own damaged cells and lost tissue. The Anglo-Saxon often attributes liver ailments to malnutrition, a fate to which the liver is not conspicuously subject in France, where every foodstuff is weighed for its effect on the foie. In the age-old belief that eggs overtax young livers, the average French parent would sooner poach a hare than an egg for the children. Chocolate, butter and cream are as suspect as they are essential to French cuisine. The French even treat their dogs and cats for crises de foie.

So universal is the cult of liver worship, say many doctors, that patients refuse to believe that anything else could possibly be wrong with them. Says Dr. André Varay, one of France's most eminent liver specialists: "French liver trouble is almost a chauvinistic attribute. The Frenchman looks indulgently at the minor miseries his epicureanism and great cooking cause him, the way a valiant warrior looks on his battle scars."

Give It a Walk. This week, as the nation girded itself for its foie du reveillon, the virulent hangover peculiar to Christmas and New Year's, magazines and newspapers were filled with timely tips for the battle-scarred. In addition to stringent post-holiday dieting—for serious crises de foie, doctors recommend total abstinence from meat, eggs, fish, butter, wine, tobacco and coffee—Dr. André Soubiran, writing in the woman's magazine Jours de France, warned readers "your liver needs fresh air," and will invariably be "put in a better humor" if it is taken for a brisk walk, "preferably in a forest."