Drinking for Pleasure and Health

The Amazing Dr. Tran Ky      

Ours is truly an age of vast, even frenetic scientific advancement and insight.  Every day heralds new discovery, and our technological capacity to disseminate knowledge borders on the inconceivable.  And yet the unfolding mysteries of science remain, all too often, locked deep within the confines of Academia.  Dr. Tran Ky has a passion:  to bring to light and introduce the public at large to the untold mysteries of scientific discovery.              Indeed, this enthusiasm to share his vast knowledge is immediately striking on meeting him. A keen historian (he is the author of a book on the history of South East Asia) his medical career has taken him around the globe in many different roles; from the prestigious ‘Ecole Militaire de Santé’ of Lyon to commissions as colonel and surgeon in both the French and American Armed Forces, he has also been a Professor of Urology at one of France’s large hospitals and part of the Royal Faculty of Medicine in Phnom Penh.

In 1956 Dr Tran Ky was one off yongest in ‘Ecole Militaire de Santé’ of Lyon.

       His published output is prodigious and extends to over seventy books which are essentially devoted to the French art of ‘savoir-vivre’; amongst them, several concentrate on the healing powers of wine consumption (in moderation of course), and notably three on Champagne, his favourite ‘adjuvant’ medicine.  He is in many ways the embodiment of the ‘Médecin philosophe’, whom Diderot so admired, and a true humanist of our times.

       Dr Tran Ky’s wish and aim is to impart some of the vast scientific knowledge that modern research is bringing to light in an accessible and applicable manner. ‘Nothing frightens people more than what they do not understand’, and the days of the all-knowing Renaissance man are long gone.  Sometimes, snubbed by his peers for taking ‘the low road’, the good doctor responds with a twinkle in his eye: ‘all I do, in this so-called “era of communication”, is communicate with people in their language’.

       Neither a follower of conventional wisdom nor of political correctness, he challenges the prevailing stance and confusion surrounding alcohol and alcoholism. ‘Wine is innocent, it is the drunkard who is guilty.’

       During his many lectures at the University of Reims he has delved deeply into the complexity of Champagne wines and of their biological composition, whose medicinal benefits have made them a remedy of choice for centuries.  He will muse eloquently on the long list of beneficial substances incorporated in a good quality champagne:  the trace elements, sugars, aromatic substances, organic and fatty acids, enzymes, vitamins as well as the different kinds of water molecules (for those ‘hydrophiles’ who are keen on their water intake: ‘good water with a sparkling array of beneficial additives’, he adds with a smile); and the list is far from exhaustive.
      
       Dr. Tran Ky’s breadth of interests and curiosity would appear to endow him with a peculiar gift of foresight.   In one of his books published in 1996, he predicts the mad cow disaster, echoing similar dire warnings made nearly hundred years earlier by the great Rudolf Steiner.   One hopes his recently published book on bio-terrorism will not be vindicated in the same fashion.

       At any rate his advocacy of the moderate consumption of wine, and in particular champagne, as well as the down to earth wisdom underpinning it, deserves careful consideration.
Seeped in a long established therapeutic tradition, refreshed and vindicated by on-going research the time honoured French practice of a traditional glass of ‘champers’ goes well beyond its commonly accepted convivial function.    In his first book, ‘Les Vertus Thérapeutiques du Champagne’, newly translated into English as ‘The Healing Power of Champagne’, Dr. Tran Ky reviews the many common ailments which a daily glass of champagne can do wonders to relieve and comfort.    Stimulating a tentative libido, the treatment of cellulite, appetite loss, insomnia, food allergies…etc, the list of its curative powers is impressively long and startling.    But for those who might delude themselves in thinking this represents a licence to indulge, the message is unambiguously clear:
Be warned!
        The therapeutic virtues are achieved only with the practice of moderation. ‘One glass a day, keeps the doctor away.’ Infringement of the edict carries its own, and all too familiar penalty…