Edgar Allan Poe's Death Research Paper

The Still Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe One hundred sixty six years later, Edgar Allan Poe’s death is shrouded in mystery and could be torn from the pages of his own works. Friends and family reeled at the passing of Poe, who died at the early age of 40 years old. Doctors at the time concluded that Edgar Allan Poe died of from congestion of the brain. This was an ambiguous term that described many causes of death. In the years since, there have been many theories on how exactly Mr. Poe died. Although scientific technology evolves, no one explanation is conclusive, and that may be the only conclusion we ever have.

It was a rainy Election Day on October 3, 1849 in Baltimore. Lying in the gutter was a delirious man in shabby clothes.

Benitez of Maryland University School of Medicine revisited the mysterious circumstances of Edgar Allan Poe’s death. In 1996, Dr. Benitez analyzed all the possible causes, including trauma, brain disorders, epilepsy, and infections. He discovered that Mr. Poe had not consumed alcohol six months before his death, “and there was no evidence of alcohol use” when he was admitted to the hospital prior to his death. Dr Benitez further concluded that Edgar Allan Poe died from rabies, which was likely contracted from one of Poe’s many cats.

“In the final stages of rabies, it is common for people to have periods of confusion that come and go, along with wide swings in pulse rate and other body functions, such as respiration and temperature. All of that occurred for Poe, according to medical records kept by Dr. John J. Moran who cared for Poe in his final days. In addition, the median length of survival after the onset of serious symptoms is four days, which is exactly the number of days Poe was hospitalized before his death.” (Benitez)

Benitez presented his findings to The Clinical Pathologic Conference, and was widely accepted by his peers to be the likely cause of

A recent theory about the death of Poe suggests that he succumbed to a brain tumor. Twenty six years after his death, Poe’s body was exhumed and moved to a more honorable place. Geiling writes, “Little remained of Poe's body, but one worker did remark on a strange feature of Poe's skull: a mass rolling around inside. Newspapers of the day claimed that the clump was Poe's brain, shriveled yet intact after almost three decades in the ground.” (Geiling) Forensic pathologists have concluded that what the workers heard inside Poe’s skull could not be the brain, as it is the first part of a human body to decay. Instead they claim it could only be a calcified brain tumor. This fact is further substantiated by Poe’s friend and nurse, Louise Shew, who wrote in a letter to Poe’s biographer, “I decided that in his best health, he had lesion [sic] on one side of the brain, and as he could not bear stimulants or tonics, without producing insanity, I did not feel much hope, that he could be raised up from a brain fever, brought on by extreme suffering of mind and body…sedatives even had to be administered with caution.”