Genre:

Essay, Drollery

Subjects:

Politics, Education, Physical Geography, Astronomy, Political Economy, Physiology, Medical Treatment, Quackery, Homeopathy, Geology

    Argues against the hereditary principle as sufficient for admission to the House of Lords. Notes that 'nobody is a physician by birth', and argues that neither should a peer be able to 'practise his profession without examination'. Insists that a peer should learn such scientific subjects as 'the physiology of the Constitution which he will have to treat', medicine—so that 'he may understand the analogies of national and individual therapeutics'—and geology, so that he may 'acquire a philosophical idea of pedigree, by comparing the bones of his ancestors with those of the ichthyosaurus'.