A Letter to a Royal Academy

Description

"A Letter to a Royal Academy" was composed in response to a call for scientific papers from the Royal Academy of Brussels. Franklin believed that the various academic societies in Europe were increasingly pretentious and concerned with the impractical. Revealing his "bawdy, scurrilous side," Franklin responded with an essay suggesting that research and practical reasoning be undertaken into methods of improving the odor of human flatulence.

Franklin never submitted the essay to the Brussels Academy, but enclosed it in a letter of 16 September 1783 to British philosopher and clergyman Richard Price with whom Franklin had an ongoing correspondence, with the jocular suggestion that he should forward it to English chemist Joseph Priestley, who was famed for his work on gases, "who is apt to give himself Airs." Price did so, reporting back that "I convey’d this to Dr Priestley, and we have been entertained with the pleasantry of it and the ridicule it contains."

Franklin's essay begins:

The essay goes on to discuss the way different foods affect the odor of flatulence and to propose scientific testing of farting. Franklin also suggests that scientists work to develop a drug, "wholesome and not disagreeable", which can be mixed with "common Food or Sauces" with the effect of rendering flatulence "not only inoffensive, but agreeable as Perfumes". The essay ends with a pun saying that compared to the practical applications of this discussion, other sciences are "scarcely worth a fart-hing."

Copies of the essay were privately printed by Franklin at his printing press in Passy. After Franklin's death, the essay was long excluded from published collections of Franklin's writing. In the 1960s, it was included in volume 32 of the American Philosophical Society's Papers of Benjamin Franklin.

In modern times

Since 1929, the essay has sometimes been printed alongside a note from "the publisher to the reader," which claims that the original letter "has been owned by the United States nation since 1881," before going on to further flatulence-related puns: "Dark hints by Franklin's biographers have tainted the air behind its back, but the maiden modesty of even the most contemporary of them has blushed and halted on the brink of its release." The foreword also ironically thanks engraver Thomas Bewick ( 1838), who, being long dead, "has graciously made no objection" to the use of his illustrations to accompany the piece.

In 2021, on the 240th anniversary of Franklin's letter, MEL Magazine commissioned a response from scientists at the , a department of the modern Royal Flemish Academy (and thus a successor to Franklin's Royal Academy of Brussels).

References

References

1. The title "Fart Proudly" does not appear in print prior to [https://archive.org/details/censorship0000unse_h0p8/page/72/mode/2up?q=%22fart+proudly%22 1988]; it was used by Carl Japikse as the title of a 1990 collection of allegedly "[[politically incorrect]]" writings by Franklin, although even Japikse did not apply that title to "A Letter" specifically. Since the publication of Japikse's book, Japikse's title has sometimes been applied by others to "A Letter" itself.
2. (1938). "Poetica Exotica". Esoterica Biblion Society, "at the Sign of the Blue-Behinded Ape, 1929".
3. (1967). "The bagatelles from Passy: Text and facsimile". Eakins Press.
4. "From Benjamin Franklin to Richard Price, 16 September 1783".
5. "To Benjamin Franklin from Richard Price, 6 April 1784".
6. (1929). "Benjamin Franklin on Marriage". The Frankliniana Society.
7. (2021-01-29). "ISAPP board members look back in time to respond to Benjamin Franklin's suggestion on how to improve 'natural discharges of wind from our bodies'".
8. (2003). "Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School". Frog Books.
9. Benjamin Franklin. (1937). "Satires and Bagatelles".
10. (1780). "Mémoires de l'Académie Impériale et Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Bruxelles".
11. (1907). "The Writings of Benjamin Franklin". Macmillan.
12. VanHooker, Brian. (2021-01-22). "An Oral History of Benjamin Franklin's Essay 'Fart Proudly'".