La crise de foie

Even those of us who don't speak a word of French are often familiar with that most French of phrases--la crise de foie. Translating as "crisis of the liver", these words describe a malady from which apparently only the French suffer. Or, in an interpretation possibly even more French, a Frenchman will hotly claim, when his sacred sickness is called into question by a foreigner, that only a French person is able in fact able to discern a crise de foie.

Most sensible Americans would counter that, given that rich food and alcohol are two substances that seriously challenge the function of the liver, it isn't surprising that the French--notably hearty consumers of both--suffer from crises de foie. We health-conscious Americans are of course innocent of any such illness.

Or are we? Let's consider first what are the symptoms of this national French malady. They include nausea, possible vomiting, sometimes headache, a thick, furry tongue, and for some people a vague pain on the upper right side of the abdomen (in the general location of the liver). Hmmm, sounds for the most part suspiciously like what we would call a combination of indigestion and a hangover. "No, no, no!" a Frenchman would insist. "With la crise de foie you have le foie lourd!" This sense of "heaviness," in this case of the liver, is again one of those French perceptions that resist translation.

Do a search on Google for crise de foie and you'll turn up tens of pages of references. If you can read French, you'll find that most of them are from popular medical sites which are doing their best to disabuse the French public of their notion of this particular sickness. These modern scientific sites heartlessly insist that for doctors (even for French ones), the crise de foie does not exist. They go on to reassure that, while the symptoms are very real, they have nothing to do with the liver itself. Rather, they are the result of dietary indiscretions--meals "eaten too quickly," too rich, or too generously arrosés, literally "irrigated"...with aperitifs, wine, and digestifs.

In fact, French docs writing for these sites are trying ever so gently to convince their public that their precious crises de foie are indeed nothing more than...indigestion and hangover, perhaps indeed exacerbated by violent contractions of the bile duct as it tries to secrete enough bile into the duodenum to digest all that foie gras and camembert. But that's about as close as the crise de foie gets to having anything to do with the liver.

I'm sure that most French people reading this sort of information see its rationality, and perhaps even repeat it to their friends. But, with that wonderfully blithe schizoid quality that is inimically French, next time they've overindulged, it will be the familiar crise de foie that has them moaning.

My companion Denis is the perfect example. As an extremely high-tech radiologist who works exclusively in 3-D imagery, he is perfectly versed in the tangible evidence of every kind of disease. Does that keep him from experiencing crises de foie? Absolutely not!

How to treat this mythic malady? My own good Dr. Denis reaches first for a bottle of Hepatoum. This quintessentially French medication comes in a bottle about the size of a large Coke. It is clear and yellow in color, and when you see it you can't help but think of, well, elimination. But I believe the yellow color is supposed to make you think of bile, the secretion of the liver. This traditional medication's active ingredient is an extract of the flowering perennial plant Anemone pulsatilla, believed to facilitate elimination of bile. But the main ingredient by volume is alcohol!

Since Denis believes his own liver was compromised by an early bout with infectious hepatitis, he never drinks alcohol--not even wine. So don't you find it curious that when he has a crise de foie, the first thing he reaches for is a medication containing alcohol?

Second, Denis recommends Vichy water (a glass of which, first thing in the morning is well known to be excellent pour la crise de foie), or barring that, Vichy tablets, which are essentially dehydrated Vichy water, leaving behind the mineral salts in a handy pastille form. I suppose you have to be French not to find taking dehydrated water as a medication humorous.

Finally, Denis says that for him personally, nothing better soothes his state of crise de foie than a slice of good bread and...butter. I'm sure that this personal remedy has nothing to do with the fact that good bread and butter is perhaps Denis' favorite basic food, and one he finds soothing in many circumstances. As for ingesting butter when your liver is bothering you? Just mark it up to another manifestation of the French paradox. After all, the crise de foie has been plaguing the French people since the dawn of time, and apparently it's not about to disappear any time soon.

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