History Forum / General / Ancient History / June 2004

06/26/04 08:49 PM

Who Cut the Cheese? a cultural history of the fart

by Russ Kick (russ@mindpollen.com) - May 05, 2001

Who Cut the Cheese?: A Cultural History of the Fart

Jim Dawson

Berkeley, CA:Ten Speed Press, 1999.

Once again proving that every aspect of the human condition has or will have
a book written about it, Who Cut the Cheese? chronicles farting in history,
linguistics, art, literature, music, religion, entertainment, and other
areas of endeavor. When covering a subject like this, there are only two
ways you can play it: solemn and studious or whimsical and
tongue-in-buttcheek. Luckily, Jim Dawson goes for the latter. Among the
things you'll learn:

X "The fart is created mostly by E. Coli and other bacteria in your
intestine that feast upon fermenting food and then collectively microfart
inside you; the air you swallow and your stomach's alkaline secretions also
have an effect on your farts. On the average a fart is composed of about 59
percent nitrogen, 21 percent hydrogen, 9 percent carbon dioxide, 7 percent
methane, and 4 percent oxygen--all of which are odorless. But less than 1
percent of a fart is made up of tiny amounts of other chemicals--such as
ammonia and skatole (from the Greek skatos, meaning sh.t)--that stink so
pungently, people can smell them at levels of 1 part in 100 million parts of
air . . ."

X Hitler was a chronic farter. To combat his constant breaking of wind, he
took a quack cure that contained, among other things, strychnine and
belladonna. For eight years, he ingested high amounts of these poisons,
which very likely contributed to his irritability and dementia.

X Dinosaurs farted so much during the Jurassic period that, due to the
Greenhouse Effect, they increased the earth's temperature enough that the
atmosphere was made hospitable for the rise of mammals.

X Presently, cows, termites, and elephants are farting so much that they
might raise the earth's temperatures to a point where humans can no longer
survive. X Horace, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Swift, Blake, Mozart, Salvador
Dali, and other creative geniuses have waxed eloquent about passing gas.
Bosch, Beardsley, and other renowned artists have immortalized farts in
their art.

X ". . . [T]he word pumpernickel comes from "devil's fart" in German.
Pumpern means "to fart" and nickel is a "devil" or "goblin." The idea,
according to etymologist Martha Barnette, was that dark, heavy pumpernickel
bread could "produce outbursts of flatulence as powerful as those of Satan
himself."

X In 75 A.D., when Judea was under Roman occupation, a Roman soldier farted
at Jews gathered for a Passover feast. They turned on the Romans, who called
in reinforcements. Ten thousand people, mainly Jews, died as a result.

Who Cut the Cheese? also covers the classic recording "The Crepitation
Contest" (with a complete transcript), the fin de siecle French entertainer
who performed fart tricks for sell-out crowds, farts in movies and the
Bible, Howard Stern as Fartman, the legends of Marilyn Monroe's and Abraham
Lincoln's bottled farts, and much more. It isn't quite definitive--if
nothing else, it leaves out James Joyce's passion for hearing and smelling
his wife's farts--but its scope makes it a breath of fresh air in the field
of fartology.

 _________________________________________________________________

America writes: "Oh brother! Ever heard of the expression 'they
think their poo don't stink?" Here we have it, they insist Hitler was
a farter! Is there nothing they don't pin on Hitler??? And of course,
the Romans farted on them and killed thousands of Jews!"

=======

    So it was the war time censors who translated it as Fatherland
instead of Farterland?

    The Romans were the first to gas the Jews?