Burgundy remained silent in turn for nearly twenty years, when, lo, in 1696--probably just about the time when the popping of Dom Perignon's corks began to make some noise in the world--a yet more opinionated young champion of the Côte d'Or, Mathieu Fournier, a medical student, hard pressed for the subject of his inaugural thesis, and in the firm faith that 'None but a clever dialectician Can hope to become a good physician, And that logic plays an important part In the mystery of the healing art,' propounded the theory that the wines of Reims irritated the nerves, and caused a predisposition to catarrh, gout, and other disorders, owing to which Fagon, the King's physician, had forbidden them to his royal master.[145] [Illustration: LOUIS XIV. (From a portrait of the time).] Shocked at these scandalous assertions, the entire Faculty of Medicine at the Reims University rose in arms in defence of their native vintage. Its periwigged professors put their learned heads together to discuss the all-important question, 'Is the wine of Reims more agreeable and more wholesome than the wine of Burgundy?' and in 1700 Giles Culotteau embodied their combined opinions in a pamphlet published under that title.[146] After extolling the liquid purity, the excellent brightness, the divine flavour, the paradisiacal perfume, and the great durability of the wines of Ay, Pierry, Verzy, Sillery, Hautvillers, &c., as superior to those of any growth of Burgundy, he instanced the case of a local Old Parr named Pierre Pieton, a _vigneron_ of Hautvillers, who had married at the age of 110, and reached that of 118 without infirmity, as a convincing proof of the material advantages reaped from their consumption. [Illustration] [Illustration: ANCIENT TOWER OF REIMS UNIVERSITY.] Salins, the _doyen_ of the Faculty of Medicine of Beaune, was intrusted with the task of replying, and in 1704 bitterly assailed Culotteau's thesis in a 'Defence of the Wine of Burgundy against the Wine of Champagne,' which ran to five editions in four years. M. le Pescheur, a doctor of Reims, vigorously attacked each of these editions in succession, maintaining amongst other things that the wine of Reims owed its renown to the many virtues discovered in it by the great lords who had accompanied Louis XIV. to his coronation; and that if the King, on the advice of his doctors, had renounced its use, his courtiers had certainly not. He also asserted that England, Germany, and the North of Europe consumed far more Champagne than they did Burgundy, and that it would be transported without risk to the end of the world, Tavernier having taken it to Persia, and another traveller to Siam and Surinam. [Illustration] [Illustration]