During the outbreak of over bubbonica which spread to England between 1665 and 1666, some doctors recommended their patients to fart inside special jars to prevent contagion of the disease.
The fascinating logic behind this method of prevention lies in the belief at the time that the plague was a miasma, that is, a kind of deadly “ether” spread through breathing into the atmosphere. In this regard, the same doctors hypothesized that by diluting the infected air through something equally “powerful”, the farts in fact, one could lower the probability to contract the infection. The advice was therefore to bring smelly jars to be inhaled in case of suspicion of exposure to the deadly germs of the plague.
Although there is no data relating to the people saved with this expedient, it is reasonable to assume that the data is totally foolish, though nevertheless, the canned farts may have acted as a sort of methane placebo, relaxing the tense nerves of the population who saw piles of corpses piled on the streets. At the time, however, several original “tricks” were used to counter the spread of the infection, such as, for example, plague the houses of it stinks of goat, or use toad vomit, as we reported in our previous article.
Today our doctors claim that flatulence is synonymous with excellent bacterial flora, and therefore of physical well-being.