James L. Franklin
Chicago, Illinois, United States

One has no difficulty imagining that flatulence, flatus, or farting might have been a source of humor long before receiving any mention in the historical record. An early example of such humor appears in cuneiform writing of the Sumerians in 1900 BCE and can be traced forward in the plays of Aristophanes and Seneca and in the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Rabelais, and Jonathan Swift. Nor should it be of any surprise that Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the most famous Enlightenment figure of the eighteenth century and a well-known satirist, might also turn his wit to this topic. In 1776, the seventy-year-old Franklin was dispatched as our fledgling country’s first diplomat to France, where he remained until 1885 before returning to Philadelphia. During these years he lived in the Parisian suburb of Passy. Detailed accounts of Franklin’s colorful career during these years are the subject of several books.¹ During his sojourn in France, Franklin returned to his skills as a typesetter and printer, establishing a private press to print for colleagues and lady friends writings of a whimsical nature. He collected them as The Bagatelles From Passy. Included in this volume is a short essay, “To the Royal Academy Of * * * * *”, dated 1781. In the original manuscript the asterisks were replaced by the word “Brussels.” It was intended for the Académie Royale des Sciences des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique.²

The Royal Academy had proposed a mathematical problem as a challenge along with a prize, asserting that the solution would widen the boundaries of knowledge and be of utility. The question was a mathematical puzzle, Une figure quelconque, given any single figure, inscribe therein another smaller figure, which also given, as many times as possible. Franklin suggests that since they esteem “Utility” that “in lieu of one in Natural Philosophy,” they permit him to “humbly” propose one for the serious “Enquiry of Learned Physicians, Chemists, etc. of this enlightened Age.” Arguing the merits of his proposal, he explains that the ingestion of food produces in the bowels of human creatures great quantities of wind. Because of it its fetid smell, releasing wind in company is offensive, and “well-bred” people avoid and restrain the “Efforts of Nature” to discharge that “Wind.” Since such restraint is contrary to “Nature,” it leads to pain and a host of future disease. Therefore, Franklin’s prize question should be:

To discover some Drug wholesome and not disagreeable, to mix with common Food, or Sauces, that shall render the Natural Discharges of Wind from our Bodies, not only inoffensive, but agreeable as perfume.

He elaborates that we do have some knowledge of means to vary the smell. For example, dining on “stale flesh” and onions yields a “stink” no company can tolerate; while he who dines on vegetables “shall have that Breath so pure as to be insensible to the most delicate Noses.” He proposes that quick-lime, powder of lime, or limewater with dinner may be “worth the Experiment.” Citing the disagreeable smell emanating from our “water” (urine) when one consumes asparagus that may be masked by a “Pill of Turpentine” and transformed into the “Smell of Violets,” he reasons that it should be possible to find the means to “Perfume our Wind.” Returning to the theme of “Utility,”he contrasts the superior benefit that the common sufferer of intestinal gas would glean from being able to release wind at will over knowledge of Aristotle, Descartes, and Newton. In a flight of fancy, Franklin contemplates a day when men might choose from a bouquet of odors such as “Musk or Lilly, Rose or Bergamot, and provide . . . a Liberty of Ex-pressing one’s Scenti-ments, and pleasing one another . . .” Addressing the Royal Academy, he concludes, “Gentleman your figure quelconque and the Figures inscribed in it are, all together, scarcely worth a FARThing.”

Franklin never submitted his “bagatelle” to the Royal Academy, but he did share it with Richard Price (1723–1791), along with a letter he sent on September 16, 1783, from Passy, France. Price, a Welshman, lived most of his life in London. He was a philosopher, Unitarian minister, and mathematician. He was a supporter of the American War of Independence and, in addition to Franklin, known to Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Thomas Paine. In his letter of 1783, Franklin relates that “Balloons fill’d with light inflammable Air” are “All the Conversation.” Inflammable air put him in mind of the Prize Question essay he wrote a few years back, and he enclosed a copy for Price’s amusement. He ventures that since Price is a mathematician, he might find it “trifling” and recommends that instead he send it to “our friend” Dr. Priestley (Joseph Priestley, 1733–1804, credited with the discovery of oxygen), “who is apt to give himself Airs.” In a follow up letter of April 6, 1784, Price replies that he “conveyed it [to] Dr. Priestley and we have been entertained with the pleasantry of it and the ridicule it contains.”

It is not certain that Franklin ever used the phrases “Fart Proudly” or “Fart Proudfully.” It does not appear in the two versions of the essay which I have in my possession. An internet and AI search claims they appear in the 1781 essay “To A Royal Academy,” but I cannot find textual confirmation. The phrase seems to paraphrase the meaning of the text and be the creation of some other person. The word “Fart” appears but once in the essay where it is a pun and punchline: “FARThing.” The playful use of punning, very much in style at the time, is present throughout the text and correspondence with Richard Price.

A few observations are in order. Franklin, a man of the Enlightenment, ever the scientist, offers us empirical observations on the subject, proposes an experiment, and delights us with his fantasy. Did his conclusion about the effect of diet on the odor of flatus go beyond personal observation? He proposes an experiment with “Quick-Lime,” “Powder of Lime,” or “Lime Water.” Reasoning from the effectiveness of throwing “Quick-Lime” into “Jakes,” might not it suppress the odor of flatus? While “Jake” might not be in common usage today, it refers to an outdoor toilet or privy and is found in the Middle English of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. “Lime” also is an archaic term for a number of calcium compounds: quick-lime was calcium oxide (CaO), strongly heated and hardened; powder of lime was again calcium oxide but in a powder form; and lime water was calcium hydroxide dissolved in water or Ca(OH)₂(aq).

Reviewing the history of the scientific study of intestinal gas, Michael D. Levitt of the University of Minnesota, a pioneer in the field, states that the first comprehensive study of human flatus did not appear until 1862³: “Emil Ruge in Vienna published his findings that human flatus contained large quantities of CO₂, H₂, swamp gas⁴ (CH₄), and unidentified gases. Very little O₂ or H₂S [hydrogen sulfide] was observed.”⁵ Levitt goes on to innumerate the immense technical difficulties Ruge faced in making his observations while pointing out that studies published over the past 150 years have largely confirmed his findings. A “fallow” 100-year period followed, during which intestinal gas received scant attention. Then, in the 1960s, the application of gas chromatography to the problem marked a “renaissance” and the beginning of a “golden age” in the modern history of intestinal gas. Dr. Levitt credits Doris Calloway, a Ph.D. nutritionist at the Armed Forces Food and Container Institute, with developing these techniques. The exquisite sensitivity of gas chromatography and the recognition of the fermentation of undigested carbohydrate by bacteria in the colon made it possible to “measure the concentration of intestinal gas in the expired air.” Lactase deficiency, the inability to digest lactose in the small intestine, could now be diagnosed noninvasively by detecting a rise in H₂ in the breath. Other topics of inquiry have included measuring the normal rate of production of intestinal gas, the role of diet and disease on intestinal gas, and the quantitative measurement of intestinal gas production in relation to gastrointestinal symptoms.

The importance of his “prize question,” Franklin affirmed, was the harm accrued by the retention “contrary to Nature” of gas:

. . . it not only gives Pain, but occasions future Diseases such as habitual Cholics, Ruptures, Tympanies &c., often destructive of Constitution, & sometimes of Life itself.

It can be safely said that to date, no evidence to support his claim has come to light.            

Were Franklin alive today, he would surely be fascinated by the strides made in the scientific study of intestinal gas,⁶ but his holy grail was mitigating the noxious odor of flatus. The major components of flatus—N₂, CO₂, CH₄ and H₂—comprise 99% of the total and are odorless; therefore, odor must arise from gases present in only trace amounts (<1%). Detection of noxious odor is subjective, and the human nose (“the experienced human sniffer”) becomes the only detector. The odor comes from volatile sulfur compounds (VSCs) including hydrogen sulfide, methyl mercaptan, and dimethyl sulfide. These sulfur compounds are present in foods rich in two amino acids, cysteine and methionine, and include eggs, meat and fish, cabbage and broccoli, and beans and lentils. The colonic bacterial flora plays a critical role in generating VSCs, and the human nose, exquisitely sensitive to these compounds, is capable of detecting as little as one part in one billion. Based on the scientific study of this problem, recommendations of some help include dietary modifications aimed at reducing the production of VSCs,⁷ the use of bismuth subsalicylate, which binds hydrogen sulfide, and modification of the gastrointestinal flora through the use of probiotics. Like many an obscure mathematical conundrum yet to be solved, the final answer to Benjamin Franklin’s “Prize Question” is still on the table.

End notes

1. Suggested reading includes, Stacy Schiff, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France and the Birth of America, Henry Holt and Company, 2006. David Schoenbrun, Triumph in Paris: The Exploits of Benjamin Franklin, Harper and Row, 1976. Willis Steell, Benjamin Franklin of Paris, 1776-1785, Minton, Balich & Company, 1928, Benjamin Franklin (edited by Brett Woods), Letters from France: The Private Diplomatic Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin 1776-1785, Algora Publishing, 2006.
2. Textual source for this essay can be found in The bagatelles From Passy, Benjamin Franklin, The Eakins Press, 1967 and Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School, Edited by Carl Japikse, Enthea Press, 1990.
3. Ruge E. Beitrag zur kennuness der darmgase. Sitzber Kaiserlicken Akad 44:739,1861.
4. “Swamp gas” is primarily methane (CH₄) but also hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide.
5. Michael D. Levitt. Chapter 12, “Intestinal Gas,” in The Growth of Gastroenterologic Knowledge During the Twentieth Century, Lea & Febiger, 1994.
6. FL Suarez, J Springfield, MD Levitt. Identification of gases responsible for the odour of human flatus and evaluation of a device purported to reduce this odour, Gut 1998;43:100-104.
7. Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh et. al. Intestinal gases: influences on gut disorders and the role of dietary manipulations, Nature Reviews/Gastroenterology & Hepatology, 16; December 2019; 733-747.