Genre:

Extract, Poetry, Drollery

Publications extracted:

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine

Subjects:

Nutrition, Pharmaceuticals, Medical Practitioners, Disease

    The poem reflects on the consequences for health of overindulgence. Begins: 'Ye distant dishes, sideboards blest / With Halford's [possibly a reference to Henry Halford] peptic pill / Where grateful gourmands still attest / Illustrious Robert's skill'. The imagined gourmands eat 'regardless of their doom', 'Yet see how all around them press, / Th'attendants of each night's excess; / Fell Indigestion's followers vile: / Ah! show them where the hateful crew / Scoff calomel and pills of blue, / Ah! tell them they have bile'.