Paul Harvey says yes. But I never believe anything that idiot says without checking and double-checking. This article describes the findings of Dr. R. Michael Benitez that purports to show that Poe probably died of rabies. However, this page from The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore says Benitez’s conclusion is based on bad information. Who’s right?
I was under the impression that he’d died from syphilis, but I’m not sure where I got that. That or liver cirrhosis-- I’m not sure whether rabies should be up at the top of the list of possibilities, though. Doesn’t it seem that doctors who go on these historical goose chases often have some odd motive or agenda to forward (i.e. rehabilitating a reputation, etc.)?
I thought he died cause he was drunk and fell into a puddle and drowned, but I could be wrong.
He was murdered. Poisoned.
This is the theory convincingly presented as a roman policier in The Murder of Edgar Allan Poe by George Egon Hatvary. In this novel, Poe’s fictional French detective from “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter” is real; he comes over from France when he hears that his friend Edgar is dead, because he smells a rat. He exhumes Poe’s corpse, finds arsenic in it, and eventually tracks down the murderer.
There was a 1931 book also titled The Murder of Edgar Allan Poe by J. A. T. Lloyd, but I haven’t read it. According to the Library of Congress catalog, this one is nonfiction.
Poe did not fall into a puddle and drown. He was found unconscious on the street dressed in somebody else’s clothes (to make him look like a derelict bum). Who did this? He died without regaining consciousness. I don’t think foul play can be ruled out.
Lloyd points the finger at Rufus Wilmot Griswold, Poe’s literary executor. Hatvary fingered someone else, but I won’t post a spoiler to his detective novel.
Auguste Dupin – that was the French detective’s name.
Some have theorized that Poe died of rabies, simply because his symptoms seemed to match that disease. But the symptoms (deliriums, primarily) are hardly unique to that disease, and it’s difficult to translate the 19th century descriptions into 20th century diagnosis accurately. Rabies is one of several hypotheses going around (one was that he had proposed to someone and her family didn’t want Poe to marry her).
At best, it’s a possibility, but no one can definitely say it’s the cause of his death.
Anyone who knows anything about Edgar Allen Poe knows that he was a serious alcoholic. After his wife died he really hit his downward spiral and was constantly drinking and often delusional due, not only to alcohol, but because of another ailment which I can’t recall. (I want to say an internal cyst of some sort but I don’t know if that’s right.) He died in a gutter after getting horribly drunk, where he was found a few days later. Most things I’ve read said he died of liver problems caused by alcohol and/or syphillis.
Try this link for a neat summary…http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=003oYG
And, yeah, I know it ain’t one of the neat, one word type.
Well was arsenic tested?
Maybe he was resistant to water but still drank?
Since we’re collecting random rumors - hadn’t he been going from precinct to precinct, voting multiple times for pay. On foot. In cold weather.
Or is that hogwash.
I just asked Google if there has been any new info in the past 24½ years. Turns out the head of the Edgar Allan Poe Society put out a new book; that theory is one which gets coverage.