Genre:

Poetry

Subjects:

Sanitation, Public Health, Chemistry, Education, Putrefaction

    Anticipating that foreign visitors to the Great Exhibition will have a great thirst for beer, identifies and condemns the gruesome contents of the 'brewage' drunk by Londoners—'diluted sewage'. Describes how a mechanic broke his pledge to renounce fermented liquor. On being found drunk, he claimed that he had heard 'a learn'd Professor' give a lecture 'On Chemistry' at 'our Institute', in which he identified putrefaction with fermentation. In consequence, he was convinced that London water was a 'fermented drink' and decided that he would 'rather break the pledge with malt and hops' than with 'slush and slops'.