Communicating through an emergency press statement from the afterlife Tuesday, nineteenth-century Belgian astronomer Adolphe Quetelet expressed bewilderment that licensed physicians in 2026 are still using his 1832 pencil sketch to lecture women during seven-minute physicals.
“I was an astronomer,” Quetelet said, tapping a laminated BMI chart. “I was averaging soldiers. I wrote down, in the same book, that it should never be applied to one person.”
Quetelet, who has reportedly been trying to reach the medical establishment since roughly 1972, said he learned of the chart’s current use when a forty-five-year-old woman from Michigan arrived in the afterlife still angry about an appointment.
“She had a machine in her doctor’s office that measures fasting insulin,” he said. “It was in the same room. They used my division problem instead.”
He added that the formula does not distinguish muscle from fat, has no idea what a woman is, and was never once intended to tell anyone anything about their health.
At press time Quetelet had asked to be removed from the chart and replaced with “literally any blood test,” and the request was pending review.
