While living abroad as the United States Ambassador to France in 1781, Franklin
penned the infamous essay "Fart Proudly," which is also known as "A Letter to a Royal Academy about farting" and "To the Royal Academy of Farting." Franklin sent the letter to Richard Price, a Welsh philosopher and Unitarian minister, and to his friends. In the essay, Franklin proposed that there should be a scientific study conducted on farts and that researchers should develop a drug to make the act of farting less offensive. He wrote, in part:
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. That the permitting this air to escape and mix with the atmosphere, is usually offensive to the company, from the fetid smell that accompanies it.
