Franklin

X (also called “A Letter To A Royal Academy”) is the popular name of a "notorious essay" about ____ written by Benjamin Franklin circa 1781 while he was living abroad as United States Ambassador to France.

"A Letter To A Royal Academy" was composed in response to a call for scientific papers from the Royal Academy of Brussels. Franklin believed that the various academic societies in Europe were increasingly pretentious and concerned with the impractical. Revealing his "bawdy, scurrilous side," Franklin responded with an essay suggesting that research be undertaken into methods of improving the characteristics of _____ .

The essay was never submitted but was sent as a letter to Richard Price , a Welsh philosopher in England with whom Franklin had an ongoing correspondence. The text of the essay's introduction reads in part:

I have perused your late mathematical Prize Question, proposed in lieu of one in Natural Philosophy, for the ensuing year...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...... That the permitting this _____ to escape and mix is usually offensive to the Company.

The essay goes on to discuss scientific testing of ___. Franklin also suggests that scientists work to develop a drug, "holesome and not disagreeable", with the effect of rendering ______ "not only inoffensive, but agreeable ". The essay ends with a pun saying that compared to the practical applications of this discussion, other sciences are ______

Copies of the essay were privately printed by Franklin at his printing press in Passy. Franklin distributed the essay to friends including Joseph Priestley. After Franklin's death, the essay was long-excluded from published collections of Franklin's writing but it was included in X: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School , a 1990 collection of Franklin's humorous and satirical writings.