Sometime around 1781, while serving as minister to France, Benjamin Franklin set his pen to paper to address an important subject. Not liberty, diplomacy, or trade relations — passing gas. 

“It is universally well known,” the great statesman and polymath wrote, “That in digesting our common Food, there is created or produced in the Bowels of human Créatures, a great Quantity of Wind.” Because letting this “wind” escape is usually “offensive to the Company,” he continued, most well-bred people try to restrain the “Efforts of Nature,” at the risk of causing pain or even disease to themselves.

The essay was addressed to the Royal Academy of Brussels in response to its “Mathematical Prize Question,” though Franklin never actually sent it. He found the academy’s question — “given a certain geometric figure, how could one determine the greatest number of smaller figures that could be contained inside the first?” — so silly, he was moved to lampoon it. He especially took issue with the fact that the academy had advertised the question as having practical value. 

What would have far more utility, Franklin reasoned, would be figuring out a way to make farts smell better.

What if, the statesman conjectured in his essay, scientists could create some kind of “Drug wholesome & not disagreable, to be mix’d with our common Food,” that might make this gas smell as pleasant as perfume, and thus make people less likely to try to hold it in? Franklin went on to lay out examples of how food can change the smell of excreta. Administering such a drug with dinner might even become part of hosting duties, he mused: “The generous Soul, who now endeavours to find out whether the Friends he entertains like best Claret or Burgundy, Champagne or Madeira, would then enquire also whether they chose Musk or Lilly, Rose or Bergamot, and provide accordingly.”

Though Franklin never sent his essay to the academy, he did send it to friends and eventually published it in his collection of “bagatelles,” or trifles. It was far from the only time he used satire to make a point, of course: When he wasn’t making fun of math prizes, Franklin often wrote satirically to argue against subjects such as slavery, British domination, and witch hunts, and in favor of freedom and equality.