Jack London wrote an autobiographical memoir entitled "John Barleycorn" (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1913) in which he said:

"There are, broadly speaking, two types of drinkers. There is the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants. He is the type that gives rise to the jokes in the funny papers."

This remarkably pre-dates the Dumbo movie and puts the lie to Disney's origination of this conception.