A Benjamin Franklin Reader

by Walter Isaacson

  Mr. F.: I take—eh! oh!—as much exercise—eh!—as I can, Madam Gout. You know my sedentary state, and on that account, it would seem, Madam Gout, as if you might spare me a little, seeing it is not altogether my own fault.

  The Gout: Not a jot; your rhetoric and your politeness are thrown away; your apology avails nothing. If your situation in life is a sedentary one, your amusements, your recreation, at least, should be active. You ought to walk or ride; or, if the weather prevents that, play at billiards. But let us examine your course of life. While the mornings are long, and you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which I fancy are not things the most easily digested. Immediately afterwards you sit down to write at your desk, or converse with persons who apply to you on business. Thus the time passes till one, without any kind of bodily exercise. But all this I could pardon, in regard, as you say, to your sedentary condition. But what is your practice after dinner? Walking in the beautiful gardens of those friends with whom you have dined would be the choice of men of sense; yours is to be fixed down to chess, where you are found engaged for two or three hours! This is your perpetual recreation, which is the least eligible of any for a sedentary man, because, instead of accelerating the motion of the fluids, the rigid attention it requires helps to retard the circulation and obstruct internal secretions. Wrapt in the speculations of this wretched game, you destroy your constitution. What can be expected from such a course of living but a body replete with stagnant humors, ready to fall a prey to all kinds of dangerous maladies, if I, The Gout, did not occasionally bring you relief by agitating those humors, and so purifying or dissipating them? If it was in some nook or alley in Paris, deprived of walks, that you played a while at chess after dinner, this might be excusable; but the same taste prevails with you in Passy, Auteuil, Montmartre, or Sanoy, places where there are the finest gardens and walks, a pure air, beautiful women, and most agreeable and instructive conversation: all which you might enjoy by frequenting the walks. But these are rejected for this abominable game of chess. Fie, then, Mr. Franklin! But amidst my instructions, I had almost forgot to administer my wholesome corrections; so take that twinge—and that.

  Mr. F.: Oh! eh! oh! ohhh! As much instruction as you please, Madam Gout, and as many reproaches; but pray, Madam, a truce with your corrections!

  The Gout: No, Sir, no, I will not abate a particle of what is so much for your good.

  Mr. F.: Oh! ehhh!—It is not fair to say I take no exercise, when I do very often, going out to dine and returning in my carriage.

  The Gout: That, of all imaginable exercises, is the most slight and insignificant, if you allude to the motion of a carriage suspended on springs. By observing the degree of heat obtained by different kinds of motion, we may form an estimate of the quantity of exercise given by each. Thus, for example, if you turn out to walk in winter with cold feet, in an hour’s time you will be in a glow all over; ride on horseback, the same effect will scarcely be perceived by four hours’ round trotting; but if you loll in a carriage, such as you have mentioned, you may travel all day and gladly enter the last inn to warm your feet by a fire. Flatter yourself then no longer that half an hour’s airing in your carriage deserves the name of exercise. Providence has appointed few to roll in carriages, while he has given to all a pair of legs, which are machines infinitely more commodious and serviceable. Be grateful, then, and make a proper use of yours. Would you know how they forward the circulation of your fluids in the very action of transporting you from place to place, observe when you walk that all your weight is alternately thrown from one leg to the other; this occasions a great pressure on the vessels of the foot, and repels their contents; when relieved, by the weight being thrown on the other foot, the vessels of the first are allowed to replenish, and by a return of this weight, this repulsion again succeeds; thus accelerating the circulation of the blood. The heat produced in any given time depends on the degree of this acceleration; the fluids are shaken, the humors attenuated, the secretions facilitated, and all goes well; the cheeks are ruddy, and health is established. Behold your fair friend at Auteuil; a lady who received from bounteous nature more really useful science than half a dozen such pretenders to philosophy as you have been able to extract from all your books. When she honors you with a visit, it is on foot. She walks all hours of the day, and leaves indolence, and its concomitant maladies, to be endured by her horses. In this, see at once the preservative of her health and personal charms. But when you go to Auteuil, you must have your carriage, though it is no farther from Passy to Auteuil than from Auteuil to Passy.

  Mr. F.: Your reasonings grow very tiresome.

  The Gout: I stand corrected. I will be silent and continue my office; take that, and that.

  Mr. F.: Oh! Ohh! Talk on, I pray you.

  The Gout: No, no; I have a good number of twinges for you tonight, and you may be sure of some more tomorrow.

  Mr. F.: What, with such a fever! I shall go distracted. Oh! eh! Can no one bear it for me?

  The Gout: Ask that of your horses; they have served you faithfully.

  Mr. F.: How can you so cruelly sport with my torments?

  The Gout: Sport! I am very serious. I have here a list of offences against your own health distinctly written, and can justify every stroke inflicted on you.

  Mr. F.: Read it then.

  The Gout: It is too long a detail; but I will briefly mention some particulars.

  Mr. F.: Proceed. I am all attention.

  The Gout: Do you remember how often you have promised yourself, the following morning, a walk in the grove of Boulogne, in the garden de La Muette, or in your own garden, and have violated your promise, alleging, at one time, it was too cold, at another too warm, too windy, too moist, or what else you pleased; when in truth it was too nothing but your insuperable love of ease?

  Mr. F.: That I confess may have happened occasionally, probably ten times in a year.

  The Gout: Your confession is very far short of the truth; the gross amount is one hundred and ninety-nine times.

  Mr. F.: Is it possible?

  The Gout: So possible that it is fact; you may rely on the accuracy of my statement. You know M. Brillon’s gardens, and what fine walks they contain; you know the handsome flight of an hundred steps which lead from the terrace above to the lawn below. You have been in the practice of visiting this amiable family twice a week, after dinner, and it is a maxim of your own, that “a man may take as much exercise in walking a mile up and down stairs, as in ten on level ground.” What an opportunity was here for you to have had exercise in both these ways! Did you embrace it, and how often?

  Mr. F.: I cannot immediately answer that question.

  The Gout: I will do it for you; not once.

  Mr. F.: Not once?

  The Gout: Even so. During the summer you went there at six o’clock. You found the charming lady, with her lovely children and friends, eager to walk with you, and entertain you with their agreeable conversation; and what has been your choice? Why, to sit on the terrace, satisfying yourself with the fine prospect, and passing your eye over the beauties of the garden below, without taking one step to descend and walk about in them. On the contrary, you call for tea and the chessboard; and lo! you are occupied in your seat till nine o’clock, and that besides two hours’ play after dinner; and then, instead of walking home, which would have bestirred you a little, you step into your carriage. How absurd to suppose that all this carelessness can be reconcilable with health, without my interposition!

  Mr. F.: I am convinced now of the justness of Poor Richard’s remark, that “Our debts and our sins are always greater than we think for.”

  The Gout: So it is. You philosophers are sages in your maxims, and fools in your condu
ct.

  Mr. F.: But do you charge among my crimes that I return in a carriage from M. Brillon’s?

  The Gout: Certainly; for having been seated all the while, you cannot object the fatigue of the day, and cannot want therefore the relief of a carriage.

  Mr. F.: What then would you have me do with my carriage?

  The Gout: Burn it if you choose; you would at least get heat out of it once in this way; or if you dislike that proposal, here’s another for you; observe the poor peasants who work in the vineyards and grounds about the villages of Passy, Auteuil, Chaillot, etc.; you may find every day among these deserving creatures four or five old men and women, bent and perhaps crippled by weight of years, and too long and too great labor. After a most fatiguing day these people have to trudge a mile or two to their smoky huts. Order your coachman to set them down. This is an act that will be good for your soul; and, at the same time, after your visit to the Brillons, if you return on foot, that will be good for your body.

  Mr. F.: Ah! how tiresome you are!

  The Gout: Well, then, to my office; it should not be forgotten that I am your physician. There.

  Mr. F.: Ohhh! what a devil of a physician!

  The Gout: How ungrateful you are to say so! Is it not I who, in the character of your physician, have saved you from the palsy, dropsy, and apoplexy? One or other of which would have done for you long ago but for me.

  Mr. F.: I submit, and thank you for the past, but entreat the discontinuance of your visits for the future; for in my mind, one had better die than be cured so dolefully. Permit me just to hint that I have also not been unfriendly to you. I never feed physician or quack of any kind, to enter the list against you; if then you do not leave me to my repose, it may be said you are ungrateful too.

  The Gout: I can scarcely acknowledge that as any objection. As to quacks, I despise them; they may kill you indeed, but cannot injure me. And as to regular physicians, they are at last convinced that The Gout, in such a subject as you are, is no disease, but a remedy; and wherefore cure a remedy?—but to our business—there.

  Mr. F.: Oh! oh! For Heaven’s sake leave me! and I promise faithfully never more to play at chess, but to take exercise daily, and live temperately.

  The Gout: I know you too well. You promise fair; but, after a few months of good health, you will return to your old habits; your fine promises will be forgotten like the forms of the last year’s clouds. Let us then finish the account, and I will go. But I leave you with an assurance of visiting you again at a proper time and place; for my object is your good, and you are sensible now that I am your real friend.

  The Science of Farts

  A similar spoof, even wittier and more famous (or perhaps notorious), was the mock proposal he made to the Royal Academy of Brussels that they study the causes and cures of farting. Noting that the academy’s leaders, in soliciting questions to study, claimed to “esteem utility,” he suggested an enquiry that would be worthy of “this enlightened age.”

  Although he printed this farce privately at his press in Passy, Franklin apparently had qualms and never published it publicly. He did, however, send it to friends, and he noted in particular that it might be of interest to one of them, the famous chemist and gas specialist Joseph Priestley, “who is apt to give himself airs.”

  TO THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF BRUSSELS, C. 1780

  To the Royal Academy of ******

  Gentlemen,

  I have perused your late mathematical Prize Question, proposed in lieu of one in Natural Philosophy, for the ensuing year, viz. Une figure quelconque donne, on demande dy inscrire le plus grand nombre de fois possible une autre figure plus petite quelconque, qui est aussi donne. I was glad to find by these following Words, l’Académie a jug que cette découverte, en tendant les bornes de nos connoissances, ne seroit pas sans UTILITÉ, that you esteem Utility an essential Point in your Enquiries, which has not always been the case with all Academies; and I conclude therefore that you have given this Question instead of a philosophical, or as the learned express it, a physical one, because you could not at the time think of a physical one that promised greater Utility.

  Permit me then humbly to propose one of that sort for your consideration, and through you, if you approve it, for the serious enquiry of learned physicians, chemists, &c. of this enlightened age.

  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.

  That all well-bred people therefore, to avoid giving such offence, forcibly restrain the efforts of nature to discharge that wind.

  That so retained contrary to Nature, it not only gives frequently great present pain, but occasions future diseases, such as habitual colics, ruptures, tympanis, &c. often destructive of the constitution, & sometimes of life itself.

  Were it not for the odiously offensive smell accompanying such escapes, polite people would probably be under no more restraint in discharging such wind in company, than they are in spitting, or in blowing their noses.

  My Prize Question therefore should be, To discover some drug wholesome & not disagreeable, to be mixed with our common food, or sauces, that shall render the natural discharges of wind from our bodies, not only inoffensive, but agreeable as perfumes.

  That this is not a chimerical project, and altogether impossible, may appear from these considerations. That we already have some knowledge of means capable of varying that smell. He that dines on stale flesh, especially with much addition of onions, shall be able to afford a stink that no company can tolerate; while he that has lived for some time on vegetables only, shall have that breath so pure as to be insensible to the most delicate noses; and if he can manage so as to avoid the report, he may any where give vent to his griefs, unnoticed. But as there are many to whom an entire vegetable diet would be inconvenient, and as a little quick-lime thrown into a jakes will correct the amazing quantity of fetid air arising from the vast mass of putrid matter contained in such places, and render it rather pleasing to the smell, who knows but that a little powder of lime (or some other thing equivalent) taken in our food, or perhaps a glass of limewater drank at dinner, may have the same effect on the air produced in and issuing from our bowels? This is worth the experiment.

  Certain it is also that we have the power of changing by slight means the smell of another discharge, that of our water. A few stems of asparagus eaten, shall give our urine a disagreeable odor; and a pill of turpentine no bigger than a pea, shall bestow on it the pleasing smell of violets. And why should it be thought more impossible in nature, to find means of making a perfume of our wind than of our water?

  For the encouragement of this enquiry, (from the immortal honor to be reasonably expected by the inventor) let it be considered of how small importance to mankind, or to how small a part of mankind have been useful those discoveries in science that have heretofore made philosophers famous. Are there twenty men in Europe at this day, the happier, or even the easier, for any knowledge they have picked out of Aristotle? What comfort can the vortices of Descartes give to a man who has whirlwinds in his bowels! The knowledge of Newton’s mutual attraction of the particles of matter, can it afford ease to him who is racked by their mutual repulsion, and the cruel distensions it occasions? The pleasure arising to a few philosophers, from seeing, a few times in their life, the threads of light untwisted, and separated by the Newtonian prism into seven colors, can it be compared with the ease and comfort every man living might feel seven times a day, by discharging freely the wind from his bowels? Especially if it be converted into a perfume: for the pleasures of one sense being little inferior to those of another, instead of pleasing the sight he might delight the smell of those about him, & make numbers happy, which to a benevolent mind must afford infinite satisfaction.

  The generous soul, who
now endeavors 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 lily, rose or bergamot, and provide accordingly. And surely such a liberty of expressing ones scent-iments, and pleasing one another, is of infinitely more importance to human happiness than that liberty of the press, or abusing one another, which the English are so ready to fight & die for. In short, this invention, if completed, would be, as Bacon expresses it, bringing philosophy home to men’s business and bosoms. And I cannot but conclude, that in Comparison therewith, for universal and continual UTILITY, the Science of the Philosophers above-mentioned, even with the addition, Gentlemen, of your figure quelconque and the figures inscribed in it, are, all together, scarcely worth a

  FART-HING.

  A Fable About Misguided Loyalists

  The most contentious issue when Franklin was negotiating a peace treaty with Britain in 1782 was the treatment of those in America who had remained loyal to the king during the revolution. It was a particularly sore subject for Franklin, who had split bitterly with his son William, a noted loyalist. Should restitution be made by America for the property it confiscated from such loyalists? Franklin ardently (and successfully) insisted not, and he wrote a fable about the noble lion who stood up against such mongrel dogs.

  C. NOVEMBER, 1782

  Apologue

  Lion, king of a certain forest, had among his subjects a body of faithful dogs, in principle and affection strongly attached to his person and government, but through whose assistance he had extended his dominions, and had become the terror of his enemies.

  Lion, however, influenced by evil counselors, took an aversion to the dogs, condemned them unheard, and ordered his tigers, leopards, and panthers to attack and destroy them.

  The dogs petitioned humbly, but their petitions were rejected haughtily; and they were forced to defend themselves, which they did with bravery.