"This important study explores the medicalization of alcohol abuse in the 19th century US" and its influence on American literature and popular culture ( Choice).In Rum Maniacs, Matthew Warner Osborn examines the rise of pathological drinking as a subject of medical interest, social controversy, and lurid fascination in 19th century America. At the heart of that story is the disease that afflicted Edgar Allen Poe: delirium tremens. Poe's alcohol a...