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Book Cover
E-book
Author Osborn, Matthew Warner, author

Title Rum maniacs : alcoholic insanity in the early American Republic / Matthew Warner Osborn
Published Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2014

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Description 1 online resource (viii, 268 pages) : illustrations
Contents Ardent spirits and republican medicine -- Discovering delirium tremens -- Hard drinking and want -- The benevolent empire of medicine -- The pathology of intemperance -- The drunkard's demons -- Epilogue: alcoholics and pink elephants
Summary 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 and the "fantastic terrors" that characterize it
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-258) and index
Notes Online resource; title from digital title page (ebray platform, viewed May 6, 2014)
Subject Delirium tremens -- United States -- History -- 19th century
Delirium tremens -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia -- History -- 19th century
Delirium tremens -- United States -- Psychological aspects -- History -- 19th century
Delirium tremens -- Social aspects -- United States -- History -- 19th century
Temperance -- United States -- History -- 19th century
Alcohol Withdrawal Delirium -- history
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Social Security.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Social Services & Welfare.
Delirium tremens
Temperance
SUBJECT United States
Subject Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
United States
Genre/Form Electronic books
History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2013025544
ISBN 9780226099927
022609992X