The Dispensary
Book • 2018
Samuel Garth's The Dispensary (1699) is a mock-epic poem that satirizes the disputes between physicians and apothecaries over the establishment of charitable dispensaries.
Written in heroic couplets, the poem adapts epic conventions to lampoon professional quarrels, highlighting the pretensions and self-interest of medical practitioners.
Its lively satire and classical allusions made it popular in its time and influential on later eighteenth-century writers who used mock-heroic form for social critique.
The Dispensary exemplifies how serious poetic form was repurposed to expose contemporary follies.
Poets like Alexander Pope drew on this lineage when crafting comical epic imitations such as The Rape of the Lock.
Written in heroic couplets, the poem adapts epic conventions to lampoon professional quarrels, highlighting the pretensions and self-interest of medical practitioners.
Its lively satire and classical allusions made it popular in its time and influential on later eighteenth-century writers who used mock-heroic form for social critique.
The Dispensary exemplifies how serious poetic form was repurposed to expose contemporary follies.
Poets like Alexander Pope drew on this lineage when crafting comical epic imitations such as The Rape of the Lock.
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Narrative Poems: ‘The Rape of the Lock’ by Alexander Pope
