The Physiology of Taste (27 page)

49:
THIRST IS THE
inner consciousness of the need to drink. Since a bodily heat of about 104 degrees Fahrenheit causes a steady evaporation of the various fluids whose circulation maintains life, the resulting losses would very quickly make these fluids inadequate to carry out their functions if they were not often renewed and refreshed: it is this need which gives rise to the feeling of thirst.

It is my belief that the seat of thirst is found in the whole digestive system. When a man is thirsty (and as a hunter I have often been so), he distinctly feels that all the absorbent parts of his mouth, throat, and stomach are involved in a parched craving; and if now and then he assuages his thirst by an outside application of moisture, for instance as when he takes a bath, the liquid is carried to the seat of his discomfort as soon as it is absorbed into his circulation, and acts as a remedy for his desiccated organs.

When this need is examined in its fullest scope, it can be seen that there are three kinds of thirst: latent, artificial, and burning.

Latent or habitual thirst is the unconscious balance which is established between bodily evaporation and the need to replenish the vaporized moisture; it is this which leads us, without our feeling any misery because of it, to drink during our meals, and makes us able also to drink at almost any time of the day. The thirst is always with us and in its way is part of our very existence.

Artificial thirst, which is peculiar to the human race, comes from an inborn instinct which we possess to want in our drink a strength which nature has not put there, and which is made only
by fermentation. This thirst constitutes a factitious enjoyment rather than a natural need: it is in truth unappeasable, because the drinks which we take to ease it have the inevitable effect of making it worse; this thirst, which ends by becoming habitual, is what makes drunkards in every country of the world, and it almost always happens that their drinking will not cease either until there is nothing more to be drunk or until their thirst has got the better of them and destroyed them.

When, on the other hand, one’s thirst is appeased only by pure water, which seems to be the natural antidote for it, one never drinks a swallow more than is needed.

Burning thirst is the kind which is caused by an increasing need to drink and the impossibility of satisfying one’s latent thirst.

It is called
burning
because it is accompanied by a hot sensation of the tongue, dryness of the palate, and a consuming heat throughout the whole body.

The feeling is so strong that the word thirst is synonymous, in almost every language, with extreme covetousness and with imperious desire, as for instance a thirst for gold, for wealth, for power, for revenge, and so on, expressions which would not become current if any man who had felt actual thirst once in his life did not admit their rightness.

Hunger is accompanied by a pleasant sensation, so long as it does not become too strong; thirst on the other hand has no gentle dawning, and from the instant it begins it causes discomfort, and an anxiety which is horrible if there is no hope of relieving it.

In compensation, the act of drinking can, according to circumstances, give us extremely poignant delight; and when we appease a consuming thirst or satisfy a moderate one with a delicious drink, our whole papillary apparatus is titillated, from the tip of the tongue to the depths of the stomach.

One can die much more quickly from thirst than from hunger, too. There are examples of men who, given a supply of water, have lived more than eight days without eating, whereas those who are quite without anything to drink never survive the fifth day.

This is because the former are attacked only by exhaustion and weakness, where the latter are consumed by a burning and mounting fever.

Men do not always survive even five days of thirst, and in 1787 one of the Swiss Guard of Louis XVI died after staying only twenty-four hours without anything to drink.

He was in a tavern with some of his comrades: there, as he held out his glass, one of them teased him for drinking more than the rest of them and for not being able to wait his turn.

At this he bet that he could go a whole day without a drink, and they took him up on the wager, which was to be ten bottles of wine.

From this moment the soldier stopped drinking, even though he stayed some two hours longer watching his friends enjoy themselves.

The night passed well, naturally; but at sunrise he found it very hard not to have his usual little nip of brandy, which he had never missed taking.

All morning he was nervous and uneasy; he came and went, stood up and sat down without purpose, and had the air of not knowing what to do with himself.

At one o’clock he lay down, feeling that he might be more peaceful in bed: he suffered, and was really ill, but his friends entreated him in vain to take a drink; he insisted that he would hold out easily until nightfall; he wanted to win his bet, and undoubtedly felt a little soldierly pride, also, in being able to withstand suffering.

He endured it until seven o’clock: but at seven-thirty he felt very ill, began to die, and expired without being able even to sip at a glass of wine which was held out to him.

I was told all these details the same evening by M. Schneider, worthy fifer of the Swiss Guard, in whose home I lived at Versailles.

50: Various circumstances, either alone or combined, can help to increase thirst. We shall outline a few which have not been without influences on our manners.

Heat augments thirst; from this springs the penchant men have always had for settling along the banks of rivers.

Physical labor augments thirst; thus men who employ workers never hesitate to encourage them with drinks; and from that springs the proverb that the wine which is given to them is always cheap at any price.

Dancing augments thirst; and from that comes the long list of invigorating and refreshing drinks which are always found at balls and parties.

Oratory augments thirst; therefore we have the glass of water which all speakers practice drinking gracefully, and which will soon be seen on the edge of every pulpit, beside the customary white handkerchief.
*

Sexual delights augment thirst; this must be why, in the poetical descriptions of Cyprus, Amathontes, Gnidos and other places inhabited by Venus, they are never without their bosky shades and their little winding, murmuring, flowing brooks.

Singing augments thirst; and from this springs the universal belief that musicians are indefatigable drinkers. As a musician myself, I must protest against this reputation, which is neither justified nor truthful.

The artists who perform in our drawing rooms drink with both discretion and wisdom; but what they must deny themselves on one hand they make up on the other; and even if they are not topers, they are consummate trenchermen, so much so that it is rumored that the annual banquet in celebration of Saint Cecilia’s Day at the Society of Transcendental Harmony has sometimes lasted more than twenty-four hours.

51: Exposure to a brisk wind is a very strong cause of mounting thirst, and I think that the following example of this will be read with enjoyment, especially by hunters.

It is well known that quail thrive in the high mountains, where they are surest of hatching all their eggs because of the later harvests.

When the rye is cut, they retreat into the barley and the oats; and when these last are reaped, they migrate to the fields where the ripening is less advanced.

This then is the time to hunt them, because all the birds which a month before were scattered over a whole parish are now gathered into a few little fields, and it being the end of the season they are marvelously big and plump.

It is for this reason that I found myself one day, with a few friends on a hillside near the little town of Nantua, in the county known as “Plan d’Hotonne,” and we were on the point of starting our hunt, on one of the most beautiful days of the month of September, under a brilliant sun unknown to
COCKNEYS
.
*

However, while we breakfasted, a really violent north wind arose, contrary to all our hopes but still not keeping us from heading for the open country.

We had hunted for a quarter-hour at most when the softest of our band began to complain that he was thirsty; we would undoubtedly have teased him about it, if each of us had not already felt the same need.

We all drank, since the donkey bearing our supplies had come along with us, but our relief did not last long. Our thirst returned, and in such intensity that some of us believed ourselves to be ill, and others on the verge of it, and we spoke of heading back, which would have meant a ten-league journey all for nothing.

I had had time to assemble my thoughts, and I had uncovered the reason for this extraordinary need. I called all my comrades together, therefore, and told them that we were under the influence of four distinct things which had united to undo us: the marked decrease of the atmospheric pressure at that altitude, which perforce made our circulation more rapid; the direct action of the sun which beat down upon us; the walking which made us breathe more heavily; and, more than anything else, the action
of the wind, which, piercing us through and through, undid the good work of the perspiration we might have raised, absorbed its fluids, and prevented it from forming on our skins.

I added that, in spite of this situation, there was no real danger; having recognized the enemy we must resist it; and it would be held back if we drank every half-hour.

This precaution, however, was insufficient, for our thirst was unquenchable: neither wine, nor brandy, nor wine and water mixed, nor even brandy mixed with water, could help us. We were thirsty even as we drank, and felt uneasy for the whole day.

It finished, though, as will any other day: the owner of the Latour estate opened his doors to us, and we added our supplies to his.

We dined in a marvelous fashion, and not much later went to bury ourselves in the hay, to fall into a delicious sleep.

The next day my theory received the sanction of experience. The wind died completely away during the night; and although the sun was as beautiful as the day before, and even hotter, we hunted for a good part of the day without feeling any inconvenient thirst.

But the worst damage had already been done: our flasks, although we had filled them at the beginning of the hunt with wise forethought, had not been able to stand up under the repeated assaults of the day before; they were nothing more than soulless bodies by now, and we were forced to fall back on the kegs of the country tavern keepers.

There was no help for it, but we could not restrain our plaints; and I hurled toward that desiccating north wind an invective oration when I was confronted with a dish fit for any king’s table, a plate of fresh spinach cooked with quail fat, to be enjoyed with a wine barely as decent as one from Suresnes.
*

52:
BY
DRINKS
WE
must understand any liquid which can be mixed with our food.

Water seems to be the most natural one. It is found wherever there are animals, takes the place of milk for adults, and is as necessary to us as the air itself.

Water is the only liquid which truly appeases thirst, and it is for this reason that only a small quantity of it is drunk. The main body of other liquids which man consumes are no more than palliatives, and if he were limited to water, it would never have been said of him that one of his privileges was to drink without being thirsty.

Drinks are absorbed by the animal system with facility; their effect is immediate, and the relief which they give is in a way instantaneous. Give to a tired man the most substantial foods, and he will eat them but painfully and without feeling any appreciable benefit. Give him a glass of wine or brandy, and in an instant he feels better and you will see him come to life again.

I can add weight to this theory with a rather remarkable fact which I learned from my nephew, Colonel Guigard, no storyteller by nature, but whose veracity is flawless.

He was in command of a detachment returning from the siege of Jaffa, and was not more than a few hundred paces from the place where they were to stop and find water, when his men began to come across the bodies of soldiers who should have been one day’s march ahead of them, all dead of the heat.

Among the victims of this searing climate was one who was known by several soldiers of my nephew’s detachment.

He had been dead for more than twenty-four hours, and the sun which had been beating down on him all day had turned his face as black as a crow’s.

Some of his comrades drew near him, perhaps to take one last look at him or more likely to strip him if there was anything of value left upon him, and they were amazed to find that his limbs were still limp and that he even seemed to have a little bodily warmth around his heart.

“Give him a drop of the real stuff,” said the clown of the group, “and I’ll bet that if he’s not too far gone into the next world he’ll come back to taste it.”