Gender, Health, and Popular Culture: Historical Perspectives

Hideous Monsters before the Eye: Delirium tremens and Manhood in Antebellum Philadelphia

Hideous Monsters before the Eye: Delirium tremens and Manhood in Antebellum Philadelphia Ric N. Caric “But what is the matter, Bill?” he asked, earnestly.... “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” eagerly enquired half a dozen others coming up. “Why, the man with the poker is after him!” I believe said the person who had first spoken, in a half laughing, half serious tone. “Poor fellow,” ejaculated one.“Poor fellow indeed!” said another.1 I n Six Nights with the Washingtonians, temperance novelist T.S. Arthur uses “the man with the poker” as a popular term for delirium tremens, a condition in which heavy drinkers develop hallucinations. The fictional character, Bill, a reformed drinker who is recounting the story, has an attack of delirium tremens while at work as a bookbinder. First, his hands tremble, after which an iron bar for which he is reaching “assumed the form of a serpent.” Soon Bill sees “a face of horrible malignancy, just over my head, and a dozen serpents and dragons, and monsters of all shapes.” Seeking relief at a tavern, Bill jumps away from a decanter and glass that “seemed instantly changed into a living monster.” Advised that he is not well, Bill goes home and is haunted for two days by “awful and malignant shapes” before being taken to the almshouse .2 As Bill’s condition becomes known, it turns out that he is the only man in the company who does not know that “the man with the poker” is a term for delirium tremens. When a friend informs others that “the man with the poker is after him,”all of the men instantly recognize the term.Bill’s unnamed 153 Popular Representations of the Body in Sickness and Health 154 friend is unsure whether to treat Bill’s condition as an amusing spectacle or a potentially deadly problem, but the ambivalence is resolved in favour of pity as the other men in the tavern exclaim “poor fellow indeed.” Perhaps somewhat disappointed, Bill’s friend tells Bill that he needs to go home.3 Delirium tremens is a short-term hallucinatory disorder experienced by heavy drinkers who suddenly abstain from drinking or substantially lower their drinking levels. Symptoms include whole body tremors, intense fearfulness , and hallucinations of walls falling down, devils, and the like. This chapter examines delirium tremens in relation to traditional pre-industrial male leisure culture in Philadelphia in the 1830s and early 1840s. Delirium tremens primarily affected males: 68.3 per cent (723) of the delirium tremens cases and 79.7 per cent (51) of the delirium tremens deaths at the Philadelphia Alms House between 1837 and 1841 were men. Likewise, the overwhelming majority of delirium tremens cases reported in Philadelphia sources were craftsmen and labourers, with only a scattering of clerks and accountants.4 The main point of contact between delirium tremens and traditional leisure was fear concerning male bodies. In Manhood in America, Michael Kimmel portrays the middle-class“self-made men”of antebellum America as “anxious” and “melancholy,” while viewing “heroic artisans” as satisfied with being “deeply embedded within a community of equals.”5 However, artisans were highly anxious as well. In traditional popular culture, men portrayed everyday economic and family problems in terms of assaults on their bodies— as being pummelled by raging seas, “molested” by enemies, penetrated by devils, and the like.6 In her chapter in this volume on the representation of AIDS, Heather Murray asserts that popular views of AIDS patients as “contaminated” were informed by twentieth-century images of an “invisible world of germs” threatening one’s health.7 In the traditional popular culture of nineteenth-century Philadelphia, men represented their environments in ways that were perhaps even more menacing, as imminent threats to invade, dismember, and otherwise destroy their bodies. In Philadelphia of the 1830s and early 1840s, the dominant republican ideals of artisan masculinity were articulated in terms of overcoming these imagined dangers. To have “manly independence” meant to conquer apprehensions and re-establish a sense of body wholeness and security. Such conquests could be achieved through success in business or politics, but overcoming fears concerning male bodies was most often accomplished through the traditional workshop leisure of regular drink breaks, gambling, and practical jokes,tavern socializing, and holiday celebrations.The pleasures of traditional leisure were thus a necessary part of being “manly, honest, good-natured, and free.”8 Hideous Monsters before the...