Rum Maniacs
Alcoholic Insanity in the Early American Republic
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.
About the Author
Matthew Warner Osborn is assistant professor of history at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Reviews
"Osborn's deep engagement with previously unstudied sources, medical and philosophical discourse, literary production, and social history are on bright display in this smart and pleasurable contribution to scholarship. If you want to grapple with the history of alcoholism, medicine, culture, and society in nineteenth-century America, then read and reckon with 'Rum Maniacs'" – Michael Sappol, author of "A Traffic of Dead Bodies"
"Osborn's path-breaking book explains the largely ignored physician-based temperance movement in Philadelphia from 1820 to 1850 in an entirely new way. This work is a major contribution not only to the history of alcohol but also to the history of medicine and to the history of ideas. The author demonstrates that rising alcohol consumption, along with a concomitant rise in delirium tremens, coincided with a need to rethink the very meaning of medicine in Philadelphia during these years" – William Rorabaugh, University of Washington
