Book ID: CBB001422043

Rum Maniacs: Alcoholic Insanity in the Early American Republic (2014)

unapi

Osborn, Matthew Warner (Author)


University of Chicago Press


Publication Date: 2014
Physical Details: vii + 268 pp.; ill.; notes; index
Language: English

Edgar Allan Poe vividly recalls standing in a prison cell, fearing for his life, as he watched men mutilate and dismember the body of his mother. That memory, however graphic and horrifying, was not real. It was a hallucination, one of many suffered by the writer, caused by his addiction to alcohol. In Rum Maniacs, Matthew Warner Osborn reveals how and why pathological drinking became a subject of medical interest, social controversy, and lurid fascination in the early American republic. At the heart of that story is the disease that Poe suffered: delirium tremens. First described in 1813, delirium tremens and its characteristic hallucinations inspired sweeping changes in how the medical profession saw and treated the problems of alcohol abuse. Based on new theories of pathological anatomy, human physiology, and mental illness, the new diagnosis founded the medical conviction and popular belief that habitual drinking could become a psychological and physiological disease. By midcentury, delirium tremens had inspired a wide range of popular theater, poetry, fiction, and illustration. This romantic fascination endured into the twentieth century, most notably in the classic Disney cartoon Dumbo, in which a pink pachyderm marching band haunts a drunken young elephant. Rum Maniacs reveals just how delirium tremens shaped the modern experience of alcohol addiction as a psychic struggle with inner demons.

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Reviewed By

Review David Fahey (2015) Review of "Rum Maniacs: Alcoholic Insanity in the Early American Republic". Social History of Medicine (pp. 406-407). unapi

Review David Korostyshevsky (2016) Review of "Rum Maniacs: Alcoholic Insanity in the Early American Republic". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (pp. 226-228). unapi

Review Thora Hands (2016) Review of "Rum Maniacs: Alcoholic Insanity in the Early American Republic". History of Psychiatry (pp. 102-103). unapi

Review Katherine A. Chavigny (2015) Review of "Rum Maniacs: Alcoholic Insanity in the Early American Republic". Journal of American History (pp. 1292-1293). unapi

Review Wynter, Rebecca (2015) Review of "Rum Maniacs: Alcoholic Insanity in the Early American Republic". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 812-814). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001422043/

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Authors & Contributors
Thomas Muller
L. Kerr Dunn
Erica O'Neil
Collins, Julie
Raikhel, Eugene
Wood, James Anthony
Concepts
Public health
Alcoholism
Alcohol
Medicine and society
Therapeutic practice; therapy; treatment
Addictive behavior
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
18th century
20th century, late
21st century
Places
United States
Ireland
Philadelphia, PA
England
London (England)
Americas
Institutions
League of Nations
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