The Art of Flatulence

I'm Jacob Katz, and this is The Renewal: an independent, ad-free, subscriber-supported health newsletter that summarizes free tools for everyday life.

"It is universally well-known, that in digesting our common food, there is created or produced in the bowels of human creatures, a great Quantity of Wind." — Benjamin Franklin

Letting this air escape usually offends others. Which is why humans are likely the only animal to hold their farts in on purpose. Because nothing says "good manners" like being in physical pain for the comfort of others.

But holding it in not only causes pain but can lead to diseases like colics, ruptures, tympanies, etc., often destructive of human freedom, and sometimes, of life itself.

If it weren't for the awful smell, polite people would probably feel no more shame in farting in public than they do in cracking their knuckles or blowing their noses.

So, scientists I implore you. You have split atoms. I pose another question: Discover a drug to mix with our food that makes these natural discharges of wind not only inoffensive, but agreeable as perfumes.

This should not be too difficult. We already know ways to change the smell. Eat stale meat with onions, and you'll produce a stink no one can tolerate. But stick to vegetables, and you switch onto incognito mode.

And let's not forget our other discharge—urine. Eat asparagus, and your neighbors will smell it. A pill of turpentine no bigger than a pea makes urine smell as lovely as violets (beware of turpentine poisoning).

So why should we think it's any harder to make our farts smell pleasant than it is to make our pee smell nice?

To encourage this invention, let's think about how little most scientific discoveries have actually helped the average person, even though they made the philosophers famous. Is anyone really happier today because of Einstein's theory of relativity? Hawking's black hole theories and quantum physics offer no relief to someone with a turtling fart. The real heroes are the ones who can turn a fart into a fragrance.

A Treatise on Tooting

Seeing light through Newton's prism is nice, but it can't compare to the comfort every person living might feel 7 times a day by freely releasing wind. Instead of just pleasing the eye, you could delight the noses of those around you.

Friends could choose their favorite scents—bacon, freshly baked cookies, new car smell, pumpkin spiced latte, or even pizza—and you could provide accordingly. "Oh you're wearing the new David Beckham farts let me get a whiff!"

And undoubtedly, the freedom to express your scenti-ments, and make others happy, is infinitely more important to human happiness than the freedom of the press - rights that people are willing to fight and die for.

Make farting respectable again. Compared to this, the sciences we work on today are, altogether, scarcely worth a FARThing.

This newsletter is an adaptation of Fart Proudly by Benjamin Franklin - one of the most important of our Founding Farters. Legend has it he was lactose intolerant and consequently quite gassy.

Best,

Jacob & The Renewal team