Even though he was reputed to really like orgies, Benjamin Franklin was careful about his body when it came to food and drink, experimenting with vegetarianism and preaching temperance. Franklin’s disregard for alcohol made him an oddball in an age when most folks were continually soused. An excerpt from Joyce Chaplin’s The First Scientific American:

“Fat though he grew, the adult Franklin’s much-noted coolness and detachment may have been the result, at least in part, of his measured consumption of alcohol. His sobriety was striking in an age when people drank steadily–to consume calories, to keep warm, and to avoid tainted water. Tipsiness was so common that it went unnoticed, even in small children, pious clerics, and pregnant women. We might call them drunk; but drunkenness at the time meant inability to stand.”