Those in attendance were expecting a buffoonish, off-key rendition of a difficult-to-sing stage favorite. Instead, they heard the sound of a nightingale. Their hoots and jeers became whoops and cheers three bars into the melody.

What would Ben Franklin say about the audience’s initial perception of Susan Boyle?

Here’s what he’d say: “They judged her by her ugly leg.”

Franklin once wrote about a scientist (called in those days a “Philosopher”) who had a “handsome leg” and one that was deformed as the result of an accident. He used his legs to judge a person’s character. As Franklin put it:

“If a stranger at the first interview regarded his ugly leg more than his handsome one, he doubted him. If he spoke of it, and took no notice of the handsome leg, that was sufficient to determine my Philosopher to have no farther acquaintance with him. … I therefore advise these critical, querulous, discontented unhappy people, that if they wish to be loved and respected by others and happy in themselves, they should leave off looking at the ugly leg.”

What It All Boyles Down To The Saturday Evening Post

Before they had a chance to spend their newfound wealth, however, the executives were urged to give it back. The public had come to believe, perhaps rightly so, that these same executives caused the financial crisis that now engulfs the world. Not long ago, AIG was gleefully insuring banks and other mortgage lending companies against potential losses from so-called subprime mortgages. What seemed a good idea at the time proved disastrous as new homeowners, lured by low interest rates, found that they couldn’t make their mortgage payments when the rates rose a couple of percentage points.

What would Ben Franklin say about the behavior of AIG executives?

Here’s what he’d say: “They paid too much for their whistles.”

In 1772, Ben Franklin wrote a letter to his nephew that has since become famous. In it, he told the story of something that happened to him when he was 7 years old. Franklin bought a whistle in a shop after hearing another boy play a tune on a similar toy.

After Ben got home, he played his whistle continuously. His brothers and sisters, tired of hearing the gadget’s cacophonous sound, told Benny that he spent four times as much for the whistle as it was worth. His relatives laughed at him for his folly. This, in turn, brought more chagrin to young Ben than the pleasure he received from playing the whistle.

Throughout the rest of Franklin’s long and illustrious life, whenever he saw someone who was too ambitious, too willing to give up virtue in exchange for possessions, or too quick to sacrifice improvement of the mind for pleasurable sensations of the body, Franklin said to himself: “He’s paying too much for his whistle.”

Indeed, when I read in a recent New York Times that the president of AIG’s Financial Products division received an accrued salary of $250 million over the eight years that he aggressively promoted the sale of insurance for residential mortgage-backed securities, I realized what Ben Franklin would say about the situation: “The world has paid too much for this man’s whistle.”

AIG Bonuses The Saturday Evening Post

Yet as one Italian orthopedist put it, a young woman between 18 and 35 should be at her prettiest; how else will she find someone to marry? While I realize this is a particularly Italian perspective on life, I understand what he’s talking about.

As orthopedic surgeons we are perhaps more aware than most people about the dangers of obesity. We understand that vast numbers of knee and back surgeries could be avoided if people maintain near-ideal body weight. Injuries that normally aren’t associated with an overweight condition are nevertheless made worse by obesity. Consider, for example, falling and breaking your wrist. Ordinarily a straightforward accident, an extra 100 pounds of body weight added it to the fall’s momentum often shatters the bone beyond recognition.

As a young man Franklin ate sparsely to have money left over to spend on books. He was also an active sports person. In fact, while in London at age 20, Ben Franklin gave swimming lessons to the sons of a nobleman. For this and because he wrote an important piece on the value of swimming for exercise, Franklin’s enshrined in the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Florida, the only Founding Father in any such sports museum. (I’ll have more to say about Franklin’s views on the value of exercise in future blogs.)

After surveying the scene in several American cities, Ben Franklin would have this to say about the American people: “I saw few die of hunger; of eating — 100,000.”

Obesity Is a Problem The Saturday Evening Post

Here’s what he’d say: “Tis the price of fame.”

In future blogs, I’ll discuss Ben Franklin’s interesting relationships with certain French women while he represented the United States at the Court of Louis XVI. He was, at the time, a widower for 10 years and sought the companionship of several notable French ladies.

French women greatly admired Benjamin Franklin. They treated him the same way today’s groupies behave when the object of their fantasies makes a live appearance.
Franklin never objected to this veneration.

At one soiree, it’s said, 300 French women mobbed Franklin, placing a laurel wreath on his head and having the prettiest of them kiss our nation’s first ambassador on the cheeks.
A Franklin neighbor noted that women “flocked to see him, to speak to him for hours on end without realizing that he did not understand much of what they said because of his scant knowledge of our language.” The neighbor also remarked that Franklin “greeted each of them with a kind of amiable coquettishness that they loved.”

Whenever a French damsel asked Franklin if he liked her the most, the great scientist offered a Newtonian reply, “Yes, when you are closest to me, because of the force of attraction.”

On October 25, 1779, Franklin, responding to his sister’s inquiry about his friendship with French women, wrote:

Perhaps few strangers in France have had the good fortune to be so universally popular … This popularity has occasioned so many paintings, busto’s, medals and prints to be made of me, and distributed throughout the Kingdom, that my face is now almost as well known as that of the moon. But one is not to expect being always in fashion. I hope, however, to preserve, while I stay, the regard you mention of the French ladies, for their society and conversation when I have time to enjoy it, is extremely agreeable.

Franklin and the Academy Awards Red Carpet The Saturday Evening Post

Here’s what he’d say: Franklin would honor Lincoln for “securing the blessings of liberty to the People of the United States … that these blessings ought rightfully to be administered, without distinction of color, to all descriptions of people.”

Benjamin Franklin fired the first shot of America’s Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln absorbed the last. The gunfire was, of course, about slavery. Franklin knew quite a bit about involuntary servitude; his father indentured him, for a predetermined period of time, to his brother James—a form of servitude from which there was no legal escape.

Slavery was far more common in colonial North America than most people realize. Tens of thousands of slaves lived in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and other northern colonies. Thus, when Franklin became leader of Pennsylvania’s abolitionist movement, he had much to do.

The singular event that, more than any other, energized emancipation forces was a Supreme Court decision regarding Dred Scott, a slave whose master had died. Since Scott spent time with his owner in Illinois and in Wisconsin territory (both nonslave regions) and had two children in those places with his new wife (also a slave), he sued the heirs to his master’s estate for his freedom when he was moved back to Missouri. A Missouri State Court denied Scott his freedom but determined that he could sue in Federal Court if he chose to. Scott and his wife did just that, but lost in Federal District Court as well. Scott, in 1857, appealed his case the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a split decision that has forever stained the entire era, a majority of the high court’s justices ruled that Scott, as a slave, was not a citizen and therefore had no right to sue in Federal Court. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, author of the majority opinion, further stated that all blacks (whether slave or free) never were, and would never be, citizens of the United States. The Court’s majority went even beyond the issues in the Dred Scott matter. They also declared unconstitutional the provision of the Missouri Compromise that precluded slavery in the Western territories.

It didn’t take long for lawyers, especially those in Illinois where the Scotts spent some time, to realize the implication of the Dred Scott decision: If a slave couple (like the Scotts) leave their master, escape to Illinois, and have children there, both the parents and their offspring still belong to their owner, just as would a pair of errant horses that wandered into Illinois, plus their new foals. This meant that some persons born in Illinois were not, in reality, free, making Illinois a de facto slave state.

A group of young attorneys living and working in Springfield, the Illinois capital, thereafter became active in politics, determined to somehow reverse the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott ruling. They prevailed upon one of their number, the eloquent Abraham Lincoln, to carry the torch of Illinois freedom into the political arena via the new Republican Party. (They even promised to sustain his law practice while Lincoln was on the stump.) Lincoln challenged Democrat Stephan Douglas for the U.S. Senate seat for Illinois. A substantial portion of the debates between Lincoln and Douglas revolved around the Dred Scott decision and the related issues of free vs. slave statehood for entering territories.

Lincoln, in a typically long-winded pre-Fourth of July (1857) speech argued that the people of Illinois, not the Supreme Court, had the right to determine the status of persons born within the state’s own borders. He said that, “Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and the great men of that day, made this Government divided into free States and slave States, and left each State perfectly free to do as it pleased on the subject of slavery.” Douglas won the Illinois Senate seat that year, but the debates launched Lincoln to national prominence within the Republican Party. Lincoln made a February 27, 1860 lecture at Cooper Institute that showed him a more suitable presidential candidate than the current frontrunner, New York Senator William Seward.

In his oration, Lincoln asked (and answered), “Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? I suppose the ‘thirty-nine’ who signed the original instrument may be fairly called our fathers who framed that part of the present Government.” Using carefully documented evidence from their public pronouncements on slavery, Lincoln proved that a majority of “our fathers” opposed the spread of slavery from the original slave states. The strongest opponents of all, Lincoln said, “were several of the most noted anti-slavery men of those times — as Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris.”

Lincoln’s supporting footnote for this assertion included “Franklin’s Petition to Congress for the Abolition of Slavery” of February 1790 (mentioned in a previous blog). Moreover, Lincoln, in that footnote, quoted Franklin’s core demand: “That you will be pleased to countenance the restoration of liberty to those unhappy men, who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage, and who, amidst the general joy of surrounding freemen, are groaning in servile subjection; that you will devise means for removing this inconsistency from the character of the American people; that you will promote mercy and justice toward this distressed race; and that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men.”

Benjamin Franklin’s 1790 Petition to Congress, aimed at “the gradual abolition of slavery,” finally achieved its objective 75 years and 600,000 casualties later. The U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment (1865) reads simply, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Franklin’s role in the abolition movement proved pivotal by opening the issue to Congressional debate. To achieve this end, Franklin employed the same sequence of steps he used to create Pennsylvania Hospital and other enterprises: 1) Establish or take over a group dedicated to the goal; 2) Solicit public support through newspaper articles; 3) Raise money for the effort; 4) Write letters to important persons about the mission; 5) Petition the ruling powers for action. If these measures didn’t work, Franklin went to plan B: Publicly mock the opposition with biting satire and then repeat steps four and five.

Franklin’s effort to drum up public backing for abolition included every means an experienced media mogul would likely employ, including themed jewelry as a fashion statement. Just as today’s AIDS and breast cancer groups sell easily identifiable adornments to their supporters, in the late 18th century cameos depicting human bondage were worn as ornaments by ladies who espoused abolition. The British started the fad. When the potter and antislavery activist Josiah Wedgwood joined the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, he had his designer create a white-on-black cameo of the group’s seal. It depicted a kneeling African slave — chains and shackles around his wrists and ankles, arms raised in prayer — surrounded by the question, “Am I not a man and a brother?” Wedgwood’s factory made many such cameos, which abolitionists mounted in bracelets, brooches, tie-pins and combs. It was an effective emblem for the enlightened. (England abolished slavery in 1807.)

The cameo, its motto, and its image became as popular among American abolitionists as it was for their counterparts in England. Soon everything from painted silks to snuffboxes depicted what Franklin called “the suppliant.” (Today, the image is available on T-shirts, mugs, and mouse pads.)

Today, some malign Franklin for having owned slaves and for advertising slaves in his newspaper. It would be more appropriate, instead, to applaud Franklin for his transformation from slave owner to abolitionist — and an aggressive one at that — who spent the last three years of his life trying to end what he called the “atrocious debasement of human nature.”

If Franklin returned to the United States today, he would first be welcomed home by Philadelphia’s mayor, a man of African ancestry. Later, Franklin might meet to discuss foreign affairs with the black woman who served as the nation’s Secretary of State. He would be honored at the White House by our black president from whom he’d no doubt learn about Abraham Lincoln, his Cooper Institute speech of 1860, and the Civil War. And, although horrified by the extent of the bloodshed, Franklin would commend the outcome, for it represents the worthy culmination of his last public undertaking.

Abraham Lincoln The Saturday Evening Post

What would Ben Franklin say about the accomplishments of these two great men? Let’s consider Charles Darwin in this blog and Abraham Lincoln in the next.

Franklin knew both of Charles Darwin’s grandfathers. Dr. Erasmus Darwin was one of the great intellectuals of his age. Indeed, had he not been overshadowed by his illustrious grandson, Erasmus would be the Darwin we speak of today. As both a physician and a poet, Erasmus Darwin made his mark. His massive four-volume poem Zoonomia acknowledged the evolution of species but offers a wrongheaded explanation of the process.

By Franklin’s time, most men of learning accepted the idea that the species were not fixed but did, instead, change with time. They knew this from the fossils found in successive layers of rocks. The mechanism proposed by Erasmus Darwin and his colleagues suggested that acquired changes in an organism could be passed on to the next generation. If an animal, such as an antelope, needed a longer neck to reach higher leaves on a tree, the animal would will his or her neck to be a bit longer and transmit this change to their offspring.

Franklin also knew Charles Darwin’s maternal grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood. The great potter created a beautiful white-on-blue porcelain piece featuring a profile of Benjamin Franklin to honor his famous friend.

Charles Darwin did not learn about evolution by sitting on his grandpa’s knee. Erasmus died several years before Charles was born. Instead, Charles was sent to college to become a physician like his grandfather and father before him. The medical profession, however, didn’t hold the young man’s interest. Luckily, Charles was selected to work as a naturalist on a multiyear voyage of the HMS Beagle, a trip that would ultimately change the trajectory of human knowledge.

I need not review here the conclusions of Charles Darwin about the process of evolution. Instead, I’ll describe how Darwin did what he did. After returning from his voyage on the Beagle, Darwin was convinced that evolution was the fact, but he didn’t understand the mechanism whereby species would change over time. He therefore took the critically important step of joining a pigeon fancier’s club and spent many hours talking to breeders about how they introduce changes in successive generations of animals. Every breeder knows that there exists within every litter random variation among littermates. The breeder selects as parents for the next generation those animals with favored traits. In this way, animals change over time.

Who or what, Darwin wondered, served as the breeder in nature? In his autobiography, Darwin explained how he came to the answer. He had been reading the works of Robert Malthus, a Protestant minister, who wrote a book on population. Malthus, using rectory statistics from English parishes, stated that populations increase faster than food supplies. Thus, there was always a competition for food among the members of a generation. Darwin took this idea and realized that nature itself acted as a selective breeder by producing more organisms in every generation than could be sustained by the available resources. The natural variation between each member of every generation, whether plants or animals, would mean that some are more fit to survive in a challenging environment than are their siblings and cousins. Those favorable traits that allow this to happen are then passed on to the next generation.

Thereafter, Darwin always credited Malthus with providing the vital clue to unlocking the secret of nature’s great mechanism for allowing succeeding generations of life to adapt to an ever-changing environment.

And where did Malthus get his ideas? The parson, it turns out, had read the writings of Benjamin Franklin whom, in 1751, produced a pamphlet designed to convince Great Britain that it should do everything it can to acquire (or snatch) the central part of North America from the French. In describing the way the continent would gradually become populated, Franklin offered a concept we today call “population dynamics.” He wrote, “there is no bound to the prolific nature of plants or animals but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each others’ means of subsistence.”

This is simply another way of stating Darwin’s conclusion that overpopulation and the struggle for resources have an impact on survival.

Franklin, of course, was not concerned with the evolution of species nor, for that matter, did he ever say anything about that particular subject. Nevertheless, were Franklin to return today in time to witness the celebrations honoring the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal masterwork, On The Origin of Species, he would no doubt feel a sense of pride in the role his own writings played in the evolution of Darwin’s thinking.

Charles Darwin The Saturday Evening Post

Here’s what he once said: “If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.”

And what would Franklin say about the evolution of contentious political parties in our nation?

Here’s what he said: “It is true that in some of our states there are parties, and discords; but let us look back and ask if we were ever without them? Such [parties] will exist wherever there is liberty; and perhaps they help to preserve it. By the collision of different sentiments, sparks of truth are struck out, and political light is obtained. The different factions which at present divide us, aim all at the public good; the differences are only about the various modes of promoting it. Things, actions, measure and objects of all kinds, present themselves to the minds of men in such a variety of lights, that it is not possible we should all think alike at the same time on every subject, when hardly the same man retains at all times the same idea of it. Parties are therefore the common lot of humanity, and ours are by no means more mischievous or less beneficial than those of other countries, nations, and ages, enjoying in the same degree the great blessing of political liberty.”

Obama’s Economic Stimulus The Saturday Evening Post

Here’s what Ben Franklin would say: “Been thither, done that.”

During the winter of 1755-56, Ben Franklin, a civilian like Obama, raised and commanded the largest militia in British North America.

Raids by Native Americans on towns in western Pennsylvania stimulated the action. The Shawnee, distressed by incursion into their territory by Europeans, responded as one would expect. Tales of massacres soon reached Philadelphia where pacifist Quakers, reluctant to engage in combat themselves, gave financial support to Franklin’s call to establish a militia, which would march westward to aid settlers with fort construction (and warfare with the natives if necessary).

Franklin suggested that the militia’s soldiers elect their own officers. As he put it: “It seems likely that the people will engage more readily in the service, and face danger with more intrepidity, when they are commanded by a man they know and esteem, and on whose prudence and courage, as well as goodwill and integrity, they can have reliance, than they would under a man they either did not know, or did not like.”

Needless to say, the men elected Franklin to lead them. He was, after all, Pennsylvania’s most prominent citizen. Ben Franklin declined the term “general” for his position, accepting “colonel” instead. Nevertheless, when Franklin and his brigade visited the Moravians en route west, the locals addressed him as “General Franklin.”

After successfully constructing forts in three Pennsylvania locations, Franklin and his army returned to Philadelphia. Soon thereafter, on March 16, 1756, Colonel Franklin marched part of his militia past Pennsylvania’s Royal Governor—a man who viewed Franklin with suspicion. (Franklin wanted the Pennsylvania family—owners of much Pennsylvania land—to pay their fair share of the militia’s cost, something they refused to do.) This show of strength did not go unnoticed by the governor.

The next day, when Franklin left Philadelphia to attend a meeting in Virginia, his troops gave him a military send-off, accompanying him to the ferry terminal with swords drawn — an inappropriate gesture, according to proper military etiquette. When Franklin found this out, he decided that he had had enough of martial displays. As he wrote about the incident: “For tho’ a great number met me at my return, they did not ride with drawn swords, having been told the ceremony was improper. … I who am totally ignorant of military ceremonies, and above all things averse to making show and parade, or doing any useless thing that can serve only to excite envy or provoke malice, suffered at the time much more pain than I enjoy’d pleasure, and have never since given an opportunity for anything of the sort.”

I wonder if President Obama was thinking the same as he reviewed the troops, knowing that in less than 72 hours he’d be asking generals to prepare a plan to withdraw soldiers from Iraq and redeploy them into Afghanistan.

President Obama’s Inaugural Parade The Saturday Evening Post

Here’s what he’d say: “I told you so!” Franklin, after all, both created the job of president and promoted the abolition of slavery, so Barack Obama’s inauguration represents the final conjunction of two of Franklin’s most significant contributions to life in America.

Franklin first proposed a central government for British North America during the Albany Congress in 1754, fully 27 years before the U.S. Constitution incorporated his ideas in our founding document. The head of this central government would be a president-general, appointed by the British monarch. In this way, Franklin hoped the constant feuding between the 13 colonies would end, easing trade.

Regarding slavery, as a young Philadelphia businessman, Franklin owned a slave couple, which he later sold because they were too costly to maintain. Moreover, his Pennsylvania Gazette frequently advertised slaves for sale. The justification for slavery in North America revolved around the status of Africans as either “beasts” or infidels — heathens who didn’t know Christian teachings and hadn’t been baptized. This stance led to heated debates about what happened when Africans became Christianized.

Gradually the notion took hold among certain sects that blacks who converted to Christianity should be freed from bondage. Quakers were among the first to insist on this principle, excommunicating meeting house members who held Christianized slaves. This, in turn, fueled missionary zeal among those who saw slavery as ungodly. They set up schools to teach blacks the reading skills needed to study and absorb the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In 1758, a school for Negroes was opened in Philadelphia. Many slave owners disparaged such schools, claiming that Africans were incapable of learning to read or write. Franklin, however, came to the opposite conclusion. In 1763 he visited one such school and wrote about the experience to a British friend, saying that he had “visited the Negro School … and had the Children thoroughly examin’d.” Franklin reported, “They appear’d all to have made considerable Progress in Reading for the Time they had respectively been in the School, and most of them answer’d readily and well the Questions of the Catechism; they behav’d very orderly, show’d a proper Respect and ready Obedience to the Mistress, and seem’d very attentive.” Franklin concluded, “From what I then saw, [I] have conceiv’d a higher Opinion of the natural Capacities of the black Race, than I had ever before entertained. Their Apprehension seems as quick, their Memory as strong, and their Docility in every Respect equal to that of white Children.”

Franklin, during the 1787 U.S. Constitutional Convention, was effectively governor of Pennsylvania and head of his state’s delegation to that assemblage. Shortly after the convention ended, however, Franklin returned to private life, at least for a while, retiring from Pennsylvania’s presidency on November 5, 1788. By then, Franklin was already president of an organization started 10 years earlier by righteous-minded Quakers called The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage and for Improving the Condition of the African Race. The group’s stated objective was “to use such means as are in their power, to extend the blessings of freedom to every part of the human race.”

As soon as his government duties ended, Franklin got down to the business of abolishing slavery. He used his considerable energy, skill, and prestige to make things happen. He thus became the leader of the abolitionist movement.

Franklin approached the antislavery project with a level of commitment equaling his dedication to civic achievement during his earlier tradesman days. In November 1789, Franklin issued “An Address to the Public” in which he called slavery “such an atrocious debasement of human nature” that eliminating it without proper preparation could “open a source of serious evil.”

Franklin’s antislavery campaign ultimately led to America’s Civil War. Our nation’s new constitution put off for 20 years any laws limiting slavery. This would allow congressmen to set the matter aside and deal with more pressing questions, such as how to pay off national debts and whether to maintain a standing army during peacetime.

However, Benjamin Franklin, the nation’s patriarch, sent a petition to the First Continental Congress soon after it convened. This document, from Franklin’s pen, raised religious and moral issues to condemn slavery.

Franklin’s petition reminded Congress that they had been given power for “promoting the Welfare and securing the blessings of liberty to the People of the United States” and declared “that these blessings ought rightfully to be administered, without distinction of Color, to all descriptions of People.” The document asked Congress for “the Restoration of liberty to those unhappy Men, who alone in this land of Freedom are degraded into perpetual Bondage … groaning in servile Subjection.” Franklin’s signature at the bottom of the petition, seemingly larger than usual, insured open debate on the subject. And debate they did: The discourse laid out the issues that continued to come up with increasing animosity for the next 70 years.

Indeed, Franklin opened a can of worms that Congress could not close. At the time, however, the balance between free and slave states shackled progress towards emancipation. The debate in our nation’s capital over the contentious issue of slavery, however, eventually split the country in two.

Abraham Lincoln was, in effect, carrying out Benjamin Franklin’s objective when he emancipated slaves in the conquered regions of the South.

If Ben Franklin came back to life today, he’d burst with pride over the outcomes of two of his favorite projects: the abolition of slavery and the formation of a national American government. However, he’d wonder why it took more than 230 years for these two objectives to coalesce in the election of a black president of the United States of America.

America’s First Black President Barack Obama The Saturday Evening Post

Why, you might wonder, did Ben Franklin select me, a California orthopedic surgeon, as his spokesperson? Why didn’t he choose one of his 32,000 living descendants? Why hasn’t he picked as his mouthpiece a University of Pennsylvania professor, or an official of the Library Company of Philadelphia, or a member of The American Philosophical Society (all affiliated with institutions Franklin founded)? Why, for that matter, doesn’t he speak for himself?

Well, if these are your questions, you really should be asking how a dead guy could pick anyone to do anything! After all, Ben Franklin reportedly expired on April 17, 1790, after a long illness characterized by painful bladder stones, gout, and pneumonia.

So here’s the answer.

Not long ago, I wrote a book about Ben Franklin as a scientist and medical researcher. The book differs from other Franklin biographies because I directed it to the great man himself. Before Franklin died, you see, he wrote that flies drowned in wine could be revived by putting them out in the sun. Franklin proclaimed: “I should prefer to any ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira wine … then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country!”

In my book, I assumed that Franklin, near the end of his life and heavily medicated with opium, was immersed by his doctor in a barrel of Madeira and buried somewhere in Philadelphia to await future unearthing. Presuming that Franklin would spend his first few weeks after disencaskment at Pennsylvania Hospital, I prepared for him numerous emails updating his conjectures, inventions, and ideas. Thus evolved Dear Doctor Franklin: Emails to a Founding Father About Science, Medicine, and Technology.

At my book’s end, the barrel containing Franklin’s wine-soaked body isn’t found, so the claim that he’s entombed in Christ Church’s cemetery at the corner of Philadelphia’s Fifth and Arch Streets remains unchallenged. Nevertheless, since I cling to the possibility that Franklin actually carried out his Madeira scheme and will soon return, who’s better qualified to speak for him than his own pen pal? Indeed, I’m the only living person to have actually communicated with Dr. Benjamin Franklin: our discourse comprises 85 emails (admittedly all one-sided) tracing Franklin’s ideas and inventions from his time to our own.

Introducing the Benjamin Franklin Blog The Saturday Evening Post