What it means
Digestion produces intestinal gas inside the human body. Releasing this gas is considered offensive to those nearby because of its foul odor. As a result, people with good manners suppress it rather than let it escape naturally. Franklin is setting up a mock-scientific problem: society demands we hold it in, yet doing so is uncomfortable — implying someone should engineer a solution to make release socially acceptable.
Relevance to Benjamin Franklin
Franklin wrote this in his 1781 essay 'To the Royal Academy of Brussels' — a deliberate parody of pompous academic institutions. Known for irreverent wit alongside genuine genius, Franklin used scatological humor to mock scholars who pursued trivial research. His Puritan-adjacent colonial upbringing prized plain speech, and his Poor Richard persona celebrated common sense over pretension. Signing it under a pseudonym let him lampoon elite society while maintaining diplomatic cover in France.
The era
The Enlightenment produced a boom in scientific academies across Europe, often issuing grand calls for research proposals. Franklin targeted this culture of intellectual self-importance. Simultaneously, 18th-century polite society enforced strict bodily decorum — public manners manuals proliferated, and bodily functions were increasingly hidden. Franklin's essay exposed the tension between natural human biology and the social performance of refinement, a contradiction the era's obsession with civility made acute.
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