Genre:

Poetry, Satire

Subjects:

Temperance, Medical Practitioners, Expertise, Biblical Authority, Invertebrate Zoology, Human Species

    Satirizes the general object of, and selected passages from, the Report of the Select Committee on Inquiry into Drunkenness. Responding to the medical opinion that the habit of drunkenness was often the result of over-stimulation caused by the 'forcing system', Hood enquires why the doctor was not also asked about 'forcing-pumps' (139). Quotes the evidence of John R Farre that vegetable food was appointed for the human species in Genesis, 'when the restorative power of man was complete', as it still is in the polypus. He then enquires whether he would not be considered 'Farre gone' if he expounded a belief that pre-lapsarian man was 'a polypus' who 'made other men when he was hash'd or minc'd'. (140)