And I felt the same way when I disembarked the second time, to make my home permanently in France. However, one day, coming back to Paris from Nice, I got a cinder in my eye, and nothing I did for that eye made it any better. It grew horribly inflamed. Eyelids, upper and lower, were bloated red, and the eyeball itself was hideously crisscrossed with scarlet veins. I’d developed conjunctivitis.
There was nothing to do but call a French doctor. He prescribed blue eyedrops. I’d never seen anything like them before, and I knew they’d blind me. But the conjunctivitis was going to do that anyway, and to hurry up my inescapable fate and get it over with, I used the eyedrops.
When the blue of those drops met the red of my eyes, the effect was dramatic. By dyeing the whole eyeball blue they gave me the illusion for a good ten minutes that I’d been instantaneously cured of the disease. And they were soothing. They were wonderful. In the end they did cure the conjunctivitis, and even now, whenever my eyes are the slightest bit inflamed, I use them with perfect confidence. Next time you see me in a color film, and remark the fresh tint of the whites of my eyes, it’s not the good, clean life I lead, it’s my French blue eyedrops.
Well, this experience gave me courage, and I went on to discover and try other French medicines. I found that for every complaint known to man, and for the extra ones known only to the French, there is an armory of medicines of all sorts, colors, and consistencies. For anything you care to mention, and for anything you don’t care to mention, there are powders, effervescent pastilles, capsules, pills, salves, ointments, lotions, injections, inhalations, sprays, drops, and suppositories. And king among them all is the last-mentioned, the suppository.
When I was making Proud Rebel in the States not so long ago, I met Margo, the great Mexican actress, who’d recently come back from a visit to France, and she told me her story about just this.
She’d fallen sick in Paris with the worst, the very worst sore throat of her life. Friends called a French doctor and he examined her thoroughly. At the end of the examination, he remarked that indeed her throat was severely inflamed, but he was sure she would find a marked improvement after a day or two of taking the medication he was going to prescribe for her: a suppository. She accepted this statement calmly but could not refrain from saying, “Doctor, I know that there are many things about which we Americans are ignorant, but would you be kind enough to tell me just why, why, when my affliction is in the throat, you have prescribed a suppository?”
“Because,” replied he, “here in France we administer any number of different medicines for all sorts of illnesses in this manner. For two reasons: first, given this way, the medicine reaches the blood stream more rapidly than when given orally; second, in bypassing the upper organs, it does not disturb the liver.”
Margo was staggered. “Doctor,” said she, “this is the soundest, most sensible, most remarkable theory I have ever heard of in the field of medicine. Now will you please tell me why we in the United States have not adopted the practice?”
“Madame,” replied he, “it is a Protestant country.”
Sometimes, when I’m filming, I become over-anxious about sleeping, because sleep is so important for an actress and the quality of her work. Consequently I work myself into such a state of worrying about whether I will or I won’t sleep, that I don’t.
About to start a film in England and Spain in 1954, I confided my problem to my doctor in Paris, and he prescribed for me a mild sleeping drug, administered, of course, in what I had grown to accept as the classic manner, reaching the blood stream in nothing flat and bypassing the upper organs.
It worked beautifully, and I went from England to Spain perfectly tranquil, knowing I would awaken fresh every morning after a good night’s sleep during which my liver had been in no way disturbed.
One week we had a series of night shots to do. This means suddenly going to work when the sun goes down and going to bed when the sun comes up. The second part sounds easy, I know, but just try making a profession out of it. Anyway, this time I wasn’t worried, I was prepared. However, after the first night’s work, a black-bearded, six-foot-seven Englishman in the cast was desperate. He just knew he wouldn’t sleep a wink all day, and the second night’s work, for which all his most perilous dueling scenes had been scheduled, loomed before him, heavy with hideous possibilities. He was sure he’d end that second night skewered. Forthwith, of course, I told him I had a perfectly marvelous sleeping preparation which would guarantee him ten full hours of total repose, and I’d be happy to send a cylinder to his room in an envelope.
He was illuminated with joy and relief. In parting, I explained to him that it was a French sleeping preparation, if he understood my meaning. That evening I reported to the set and found my Englishman there before me. He came over to my side and said, “I say, it was jolly decent of you to have sent me that sleeping preparation, but you know, it was awfully hard to get down.”
“Get down,” I exclaimed aghast.
“Yes, really quite difficult, don’t you know. But I finally rolled it into a ball and chased it down with a glass of water.”
“And then what happened?” I gasped.
“Oh, in ten minutes I was out like a light,” he replied. “And for twelve hours at that.”
For a man whose upper organs had not been bypassed, he looked very well indeed.
Now here I would like to put in a word for the French remedy employed on the very rare occasions when, instead of a liver attack, a case of simple stomach ache has definitely been established. This splendid cure consists of the practice of eating charcoal. Granulated charcoal. It comes in a red tin, looks like what lines any ordinary chimney flue, and a single spoonful of this marvelous stuff, followed by a swallow of water, will really do wonders for a common cramp. Additionally, it has the highly desirable characteristic of dyeing your tongue jet-black. You go around for hours with the identifying mark of a purebred chow.
And as to the French doctor’s general examination and checkup, buy your round-trip ticket now. It’s more than worth the price. Here’s my own personal experience:
A year or so ago I seemed to be in a sort of rundown condition, inexplicably tired and mysteriously listless. Pierre made an appointment for me with one of the most celebrated general practitioners of the city, and the day came for my checkup.
The doctor went over me very thoroughly indeed, and as he completed the first phase of the examination he remarked, “Madame, you have a magnificent organism!”
I must say, I immediately felt considerably stronger right then and there.
Then he asked me to stand while he took my blood pressure, and then sit down while he repeated the procedure. After I had completed this simple operation he continued, “However, Madame, you have low blood pressure—”
I was dismayed.
Quickly, the doctor reassured me by saying, “—which has a certain advantage. It means you will absolutely never die of high blood pressure.”
I was delighted.
“Nevertheless, Madame,” he went on, “it also means that whenever you stand up, your blood pressure goes down. And whenever you sit down, your blood pressure goes up.”
I was baffled.
“And therefore, Madame,” he summed up, “you will always be at your best while lying down.”
I was overcome.
“The treatment I prescribe to correct the condition,” he resumed—
I was recalcitrant.
“—is: les exercises violentes!”
I was breathless.
“Surtout, Madame, above all, Madame, le ski et le tennis.”
I was chagrined.
However, sport that I am, I rushed right up to Switzerland and, because it was midwinter and 20 degrees Fahrenheit, I started taking lessons at once in le ski. And do you know, that French doctor was absolutely right? As all who witnessed my prowess on those snowy and much abused slopes will testify, I was unquestionably and consistently at my very, very best while lying down
.
Shortly after Ben and I had come to France to live and were settled in our apartment near the Étoile, Ben came down with a fever, runny nose, cough and earache. It was near Christmastime and Pierre had left Paris for Nice to visit his mother, who was, herself, in very fragile health. I found myself, therefore, alone in the foreign capital with a sick child and only six weeks of French lessons under my hatband.
Fortunately, I had met the Canadian wife of one of the directors of a major French newspaper, and through her I obtained the name of a child specialist who could speak a little English. I called him, very anxious indeed, described Ben’s symptoms, and told him that he had a temperature of 102.2 degrees. “How much is that,” asked he, “in Centigrade?” Naturally, I’d had no idea that he was going to turn our conversation into a chemistry quiz and had not prepared myself for this eventuality. I replied, of course, that I didn’t know—and wondered if in France the prerequisite for a visit by a pediatrician was that the mother pass some sort of advanced studies examination. I had certainly flunked the test.
Although I had not expected the French to have aspirin, Mercurochrome, Band-Aids, and the like, I did, on arriving in France, expect them to have feet, miles, pounds and Fahrenheit. In this last instance, as in the first, I was very much mistaken. They do not have feet (oh, they have the kind you walk on, all right, but not the other sort—you know what I mean), nor do they have miles, pounds or Fahrenheit. Instead, they have centimeters, kilometers, kilograms and, alas, Centigrade.
Now, it had been a long time since I had done my chemistry studies, but it had been even longer since the doctor had done his, and although I did not know how much 102.2 was in Centigrade, neither, of course, did he. And he was not disposed to come to see Ben until he did. His advice to me was to send someone out to buy a French thermometer, take Ben’s temperature anew, and telephone him again. I did as he asked me to, and when the French thermometer arrived at the door, I took it, washed it off with some American alcohol which, naturally, I’d had the foresight to bring with me from the States, and popped it into Ben’s mouth. After letting it have a good cook in his oven, I drew it out, looked at it, and nearly fainted. It registered 39.
I thought Benjamin must have gone into severe shock. But no, as the room stopped circling and my eyes uncrossed, I perceived that he was perfectly conscious and as rosy as a peach. With a certain embarrassment I phoned the doctor again to say that I had followed his instructions and that Ben, after all, had a temperature of a mere 39. The doctor said that I mustn’t be concerned about Ben’s fever being so high, but that he would be right over. The conversation was pure surrealism. So were the days that followed, as Ben’s temperature moved up to 39.3, upward again to 39.5, down to 38.2, and finally settled at a figure which seemed to me to be ominously low, 37.0. Five points above freezing, in my lexicon.
What made the situation really desperate was that my American thermometer, in the general excitement and out of sheer resentfulness, no doubt, had thrown itself off Ben’s bedside table in a suicide leap and smashed itself to bits. Consequently, I now had no point of reference whatever. And I knew it was hopeless to turn the tables on the doctor and ask him how much 38.2 was in Fahrenheit.
However, Ben regained his strength rapidly and, finally, when he was, at last, perfectly well, I decided that it would be quite all right for me to leave him for a few days while I left town to recover from the general strain. I put him in the hands of a French nurse who adored him and held him in thrall at the breakfast table by saying, “Let’s pretend we are lovers,” a custom which did, I admit, give me a slight qualm; but, deciding that at the age of four this type of talk does not really risk being too debilitating, I went off to Chamonix in the upper Alps to regain my equilibrium. I must say that a mountain peak is not the best place to seek one’s balance, but at least the air is bracing for the nerves.
In Chamonix I brooded over the new, real, and apparently to be perpetual, threat to my peace of mind: the unholy mystery of the centigrade thermometer. I had learned that whereas one degree above normal Fahrenheit, or 99.6, was hardly something to inspire a rush for the oxygen tent, nevertheless, one degree above normal Centigrade, or 38 instead of 37, did require a modicum of care. Bed, in fact, and at least a thorough survey of symptoms and a report to the doctor. And whereas five degrees above normal Fahrenheit, or 103.6, was very serious but never fatal, five degrees above normal Centigrade, or 42, was something only horses ever survived.
Beyond this, I was in darkest ignorance and total bafflement. Then, on my second day in Chamonix, I met the two great mountaineers Lachenal and Terray, the second of whom was soon to scale Mount Annapurna, at 27,000 feet, in the Himalayas (no, I don’t know how much that is in meters, and don’t ask me). Well, it struck me that these men might know how to figure Centigrade into Fahrenheit and vice versa, so I asked them. They did not know. However, they did know one fact, and I can quite see how they would know it in the chill of those upper altitudes; they said that 40 degrees below zero Centigrade was exactly as cold as 40 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. I remarked to myself, as Benjamin, recently introduced to Sherlock Holmes, would say, “Ah, the missing clue!”
And it was, too. I stayed in bed in my room for twenty-four hours straight with a clutch of pencils and a quire of paper and my one tantalizing fact to chew over, and I scribbled and scribbled and figured and figured and multiplied and divided and added and subtracted. And finally, triumphantly, I found a formula which would translate Centigrade into Fahrenheit. Naturally, I rushed right out to find Lachenal and Terray and, locating them, I gave them the great news. They did not seem to be as excited as they should have been. They were interested, but not elated. I suppose if you are planning to climb the second highest mountain in the world you get blasé about some things. Anyway I, personally, had no doubts in my mind as to which was the greater accomplishment. Try climbing Mount Annapurna and doing what I did, and tell me honestly which is really the more difficult.
Returning to Paris, I pondered for the next year over the predicament of all the other American mothers in France who were going through the same bewilderment which I had gone through, and of all the mothers who descend upon Europe during the tourist season, totally unaware of what lies before them in mystification and torturing perplexity. And I finally decided that it was my patriotic duty to impart to my fellow countrywomen my marvelous find. There was only one way I could do it: by means of the letters column, called “From the Mailbag,” of the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune. I thereupon wrote the following epistle which appeared in the aforesaid column thus, and under the following heading:
Formula
I have devised a formula for transposing temperature readings from Centigrade to Fahrenheit.
I cannot say it is a simple method, but as a mother once distracted by the incomprehensible readings of my child’s Centigrade thermometer during his first illness in France, I can say that it is better than none.
This is the method:
Multiply the Centigrade reading by 1.8 and add 32.
Here is an example of the accuracy of the system:
1. A “normal” temperature reading Centigrade is 37 degrees.
2. A “normal” temperature reading Fahrenheit is 98.6 degrees.
3. 37 x 1.8 = 66.6
4. 66.6 + 32 = 98.6!
Last year at Chamonix I had the pleasure of meeting Lachenal and Terray, of the Annapurna Expedition, and when I asked Terray if he understood the mysteries of the two systems of heat measurement, he replied that he was certain they had one thing in common: they were identical at 40 degrees below zero. I began from there and evolved the above method, which, if it does nothing else, may inspire someone to come forward with a simpler one, thereby contributing to the peace of mind of the American mother during her first season in France.
Olivia de Havilland
Paris, February 26, 1955
Do you follow me? Take out a pencil and try it.
A few
days later, the following letter appeared in the same letters column:
From Centigrade to…
To the New York Herald Tribune:
May I contribute to the peace of mind of an American mother in Paris by suggesting to Miss de Havilland of today’s letters column that a simple and easy-to-follow formula for converting temperature readings from Centigrade to Fahrenheit may be found in almost any elementary high school or chemistry text.
The formula she has so admirably devised (1.8 Centigrade plus 32 equals Fahrenheit) is, I regret to say, not original. I learned the same one some few years ago in pharmacy school. It was not new then.
Another formula, equally simple, and perhaps preferred by minds unaccustomed to the decimal system, is the following: for the Fahrenheit equivalent, multiply the Centigrade reading by 9⁄5 and add 32. Frequently, it is possible to convert with this formula without using pen and paper. (Conversely, it is F minus 32 times 5⁄9 equals C.)
One other formula eliminates the 32 entirely: take Centigrade reading, add 40, multiply by 9⁄5, subtract 40. Voilà!
In this instance, however, I fail to see any need for conversion; “normal” temperature is 37 degrees Centigrade. An alarming variation in Fahrenheit, it seems, should be alarming in Centigrade.
I would suggest to other Americans faced with a similar problem, that they dispense with all formulas and purchase a new thermometer, one calibrated in degrees Fahrenheit.
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