I remember Fin de Siecle posters advertising Le Petomaine being on sale in the 60s and never thought they were celebrating a fake but rather a special fakir.

On some other aspects of the thread;
1 most ruminants' contribution of methane to the greenhouse gas load comes from eructation (burping) during cud chewing rather than from the anus,
2 inulin and other pentose starches have a different digestion pathway (metabolically speaking) from the more usual hexose starches and are notorious for leading to farts. They are particularly common in beans,
3 many biology students are amazed to learn they have tastebuds in their anus. Aside from the usual canard about what their elders think of teenagers' tastes the story is that the lining of both ends of the alientary canal is ectodermal in origin and thus rich in nerve endings. In the mouth we call them tastebuds but in the anus, even though they perform the same function (fireily recording the passage of last night's curry as well as detecting the differences between solid, liquid and gas phases and thus allowing farts but nothing else to pass). good taste prevents us from calling them tastebuds.

It's a wonder no-one has mentioned McArthur's Fart here.

Cheers, Rowan