Informational Text
Four Readings About Poe’s Death
Synthesizing Sources: Seeing the Big Picture
When you research a subject, you read many different sources carefully. Then you need to
synthesize the information, putting all the pieces together to see the big picture. Follow these
steps:


Find the main idea. Look for each writer’s main idea, and take notes about it. To work
your way through a difficult passage, paraphrase it—restate the passage in your own
words.
Look for supporting evidence. Ask yourself, “Does the writer support his or her ideas
with facts, statistics, examples, anecdotes (brief real-life stories), or quotations? Does the
writer use logic and reasoning to prove a point?” For help identifying the writer’s main
ideas and support, try making a chart.
Main Idea 1
Support 1
Support 2



Main Idea 2
Support 1
Support 2
Compare and contrast. Look for similarities and differences between your sources. In
particular, compare and contrast the main ideas and the types of support the authors use.
Make connections. Does the information in your sources remind you of ideas that
you’ve read about in the past—perhaps in other articles or books or even in a story or
poem?
Put it all together. Once you’ve completed these steps, you’re ready to put all the pieces
together. To synthesize what you’ve learned, you may want to write a research report, an
editorial, a speech, or a letter.
Connecting to the Literature
The life of Edgar Allan Poe, author of “The Cask of
Amontillado,” is shrouded in mystery. Most scholars
believe that Poe died as a result of drinking too much
alcohol. According to another theory, Poe died of
rabies, a disease people can get when they are bitten or
scratched by an animal infected with the rabies virus.
The following four selections present a debate about
what killed this tragic genius.
Vocabulary Development
Below is a list of words and definitions from the texts. As you come across, new words,
look them up and add them to this list.
insensible adj.: not fully conscious or aware.
imposing adj.: large and impressive looking.
stupor n.: dull, half-conscious state.
spectral adj.: ghostly; unreal.
expired v.: died.
maligned v. used as adj.: falsely accused of bad conduct; slandered.
belligerent adj.: angry and aggressive or ready to start a fight.
conspicuous adj.: obvious; noticeable; notable.
ascribe v.: assign or attribute something to a cause.
chronic adj.: frequently occurring.
transmitted v.: passed on.
READING 1
This biography traces the last few days of Poe’s life, in 1849. He had just parted from Elmira
Shelton, to whom he was recently engaged. Shelton lived in Richmond, Virginia, and Poe set out
from there for Baltimore, Maryland, eventually planning to go to New York City. He never
reached it.
“Poe’s Final Days”
from “Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance”
Kenneth Silverman
In the early morning of September 27, a Thursday, Poe began the first leg of his return to
the North, setting out from Richmond for Baltimore on the 4 A.M. steamer,1 with a trunk
containing some clothing, books, and manuscripts.
No reliable evidence exists about what happened to or within Poe between that time and
October 3, a week later, when a printer named Joseph Walker saw him at Gunner’s Hall, a
Baltimore tavern, strangely dressed and semiconscious.
It was Election Day for members of Congress, and like other local watering holes2 the
tavern served as a polling place. Poe seemed to Walker “rather the worse for wear” and “in great
distress.” Apparently flooded with drink, he may also have been ill from exposure. Winds and
soaking rains the day before had sent Baltimoreans prematurely hunting up overcoats and
seeking charcoal fires for warmth…. Poe managed to tell Walker that he knew Joseph Evans
Snodgrass, the Baltimore editor and physician with whom he had often corresponded while
living in Philadelphia. As it happened, Walker had worked as a typesetter for Snodgrass’s
Saturday Visitor. He sent Snodgrass a dire note, warning that Poe needed “immediate
assistance.”
When Snodgrass arrived at Gunner’s Hall, he found Poe sitting in an armchair,
surrounded by onlookers. Poe had a look of “vacant stupidity.” He wore neither vest nor tie, his
dingy trousers fit badly, his shirt was crumpled, his cheap hat soiled. Snodgrass thought he must
be wearing castoff clothing, having been robbed or cheated of his own. He ordered a room for
Poe at the tavern, where he might stay comfortably until his relatives in Baltimore could be
notified. Just then, however, one of them arrived—Henry Herring, Poe’s uncle by marriage, who
somehow had also learned of his condition. A lumber dealer now nearly sixty years old, he had
wed Muddy’s3 sister, and spent time with Poe during his early days in Baltimore and later when
both families lived in Philadelphia. But he refused now to take over his care, saying that on
former occasions, when drunk, Poe had been abusive and ungrateful. Instead, he suggested
sending Poe to a hospital. A carriage was called for. Poe had to be carried into it, Snodgrass
said—insensible, muttering.
Through the chilly wet streets Poe was driven to the hospital of Washington Medical
College, set on the highest ground of Baltimore. An imposing five-story building with vaulted
gothic windows, it afforded both public wards and private rooms, advertised as being spacious,
well ventilated, and directed by an experienced medical staff. Admitted at five in the afternoon,
Poe was given a private room, reportedly in a section reserved for cases involving drunkenness.
He was attended by the resident physician, Dr. John J. Moran, who apparently had living
quarters in the hospital together with his wife. Moran had received his medical degree from the
University of Maryland four years earlier and was now only about twenty-six years old. But he
knew the identity of his patient—a “great man,” he wrote of Poe, to whose “rarely gifted mind
are we indebted for many of the brightest thoughts that adorn our literature.” He as well as the
medical students, nurses, and other physicians—all considered Poe, he said, “an object of
unusual regard.”
According to Moran and his wife, Poe reached the hospital in a stupor, unaware of who
or what had brought him there. He remained thus “unconscious” until three o’clock the next
morning, when he developed a tremor4 of the limbs and what Moran called “a busy, but not
violent or active delirium.”5 His face was pale and he was drenched in sweat. He talked
constantly, Moran said, addressing “ spectral and imaginary objects on the walls.” Apparently
during Poe’s delirium, his cousin Neilson Poe came to the hospital, having been contacted by Dr.
Moran. A lawyer and journalist involved in Whig politics,6 Neilson was just Poe’s age. In
happier circumstances Poe would not have welcomed the visit. Not only had Neilson offered
Virginia7 and Muddy a home apart from him; his cousin also, he believed, envied his literary
reputation. Years before he had remarked that he considered “the little dog,” as he called
Neilson, the “bitterest enemy I have in the world.” The physicians anyway thought it inadvisable
for Neilson to see Poe at the moment, when “very excitable.” Neilson sent some changes of linen
and called again the next day, to find Poe’s condition improved.
Poe being quieted, Moran began questioning him about his family and about where he
lived, but found his answers mostly incoherent. Poe did not know what had become of his trunk
or when he had left Richmond, but said he had a wife there, as Moran soon learned was untrue.
He said that his “degradation,” as Moran characterized it, made him feel like sinking into the
ground. Trying to rouse Poe’s spirits, Moran told him he wished to contribute in every way to his
comfort, and hoped Poe would soon be enjoying the company of his friends….
Then Poe seemed to doze, and Moran left him briefly. On returning he found Poe
violently delirious, resisting the efforts of two nurses to keep him in bed. From Moran’s
description, Poe seems to have raved a full day or more, through Saturday evening, October 6,
when he began repeatedly calling out someone’s name. It may have been that of a Baltimore
family named Reynolds or, more likely, the name of his uncle-in-law Henry Herring. Moran later
said that he sent for the Herring family, but that only one of Herring’s two daughters came to the
hospital. Poe continued deliriously calling the name until three o’clock on Sunday morning.
Then his condition changed. Feeble from his exertions he seemed to rest a short time and then,
Moran reported, “quietly moving his head he said ‘Lord help my poor Soul’ and expired!”
The cause of Poe’s death remains in doubt. Moran’s account of his profuse perspiration,
trembling, and hallucinations indicates delirium tremens, mania à potu. Many others who had
known Poe, including the professionally trained Dr. Snodgrass, also attributed his death to a
lethal amount of alcohol. Moran later vigorously disputed this explanation, however, and some
Baltimore newspapers gave the cause of death as “congestion of the brain” or “cerebral
inflammation.”
Although the terms were sometimes used euphemistically1 in public announcements of
deaths from disgraceful causes, such as alcoholism, they may in this case have come from the
hospital staff itself. According to Moran, one of its senior physicians diagnosed Poe’s condition
as encephalitis, a brain inflammation, brought on by “exposure.” This explanation is consistent
with the prematurely wintry weather at the time, with Snodgrass’s account of Poe’s partly clad
condition, and with Elmira Shelton’s recollection that on leaving Richmond Poe already had a
fever. Both explanations may have been correct: Poe may have become too drunk to care about
protecting himself against the wind and rain.
READING 2
“Poe’s Death Is Rewritten as Case of Rabies, Not Telltale Alcohol”
from The New York Times, September 15, 1996
Edgar Allan Poe did not die drunk in a gutter in Baltimore but rather had rabies, a new
study suggests.
The researcher, Dr. R. Michael Benitez, a cardiologist1 who practices a block from Poe’s
grave, says it is true that the writer was seen in a bar on Lombard Street in October 1849,
delirious and possibly wearing somebody else’s soiled clothes.
But Poe was not drunk, said Dr. Benitez, an assistant professor of medicine at the
University of Maryland Medical Center. “I think Poe is much maligned in that respect,” he
added.
The writer entered Washington College Hospital comatose,2 Dr. Benitez said, but by the
next day was perspiring heavily, hallucinating, and shouting at imaginary companions. The next
day, he seemed better but could not remember falling ill.
On his fourth day at the hospital, Poe again grew confused and belligerent, then quieted
down and died.
That is a classic case of rabies, the doctor said. His study is in the September issue of The
Maryland Medical Journal.
In the brief period when he was calm and awake, Poe refused alcohol and could drink
water only with great difficulty. Rabies victims frequently exhibit hydrophobia, or fear of water,
because it is painful to swallow.
There is no evidence that a rabid animal had bitten Poe. About one fourth of rabies
victims reportedly cannot remember being bitten. After an infection, the symptoms can take up
to a year to appear. But when the symptoms do appear, the disease is a swift and brutal killer.
Most patients die in a few days.
Poe “had all the features of encephalitic3 rabies,” said Dr. Henry Wilde, who frequently
treats rabies at Chulalongkorn University Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand.
Although it has been well established that Poe died in the hospital, legend has it that he
succumbed in the gutter, a victim of his debauched4 ways.
The legend may have been fostered by his doctor, who in later years became a
temperance advocate5 and changed the details to make an object lesson of Poe’s death.
The curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum in Baltimore, Jeff Jerome, said
that he had heard dozens of tales but that “almost everyone who has come forth with a theory has
offered no proof.”
Some versions have Poe unconscious under the steps of the Baltimore Museum before
being taken to the hospital. Other accounts place him on planks between two barrels outside a
tavern on Lombard Street. In most versions, Poe is wearing someone else’s clothes, having been
robbed of his suit.
Poe almost surely did not die of alcohol poisoning or withdrawal, Mr. Jerome said. The
writer was so sensitive to alcohol that a glass of wine would make him violently ill for days. Poe
may have had problems with alcohol as a younger man, Mr. Jerome said, but by the time he died
at forty he almost always avoided it.
Dr. Benitez worked on Poe’s case as part of a clinical pathologic conference. Doctors are
presented with a hypothetical6 patient and a description of the symptoms and are asked to render
a diagnosis.
Dr. Benitez said that at first he did not know that he had been assigned Poe, because his
patient was described only as “E. P., a writer from Richmond.” But by the time he was scheduled
to present his findings a few weeks later, he had figured out the mystery.
“There was a conspicuous lack in this report of things like CT scans and MRI’s,”7 the
doctor said. “I started to say to myself, ‘This doesn’t look like it’s from the 1990s.’ Then it
dawned on me that E. P. was Edgar Poe.”
READING 3
If Only Poe Had Succeeded When He Said Nevermore to Drink
from The New York Times, September 23, 1996
To the Editor:
Dr. R. Michael Benitez, an assistant professor of medicine at Maryland University
Medical Center, is wrong to ascribe the death of Edgar Allan Poe to rabies through animal
infection rather than to the traditionally maintained cause of alcoholism (news article, September
15).
Poe was found outside a Baltimore saloon in an alcoholic stupor on October 3, 1849, and
died four days later. Dr. John J. Moran’s account of his final days is given in a letter to Poe’s
aunt and mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, a New York Herald article in 1875, and a book by Moran
in 1885. Supplementary accounts of Poe’s alcoholic condition came from Joseph Walker, a
Baltimore printer who first found him; Dr. Joseph Snodgrass, an editor well known to Poe; and
two of Poe’s relatives. None of these confirm Dr. Benitez’s statement that “Poe was not drunk.”
Evidence of Poe’s chronic binges is strewn through his letters, in periodic admissions of
“recoveries” and promises to his wife, Virginia, and her mother to “reform.”
Dr. Benitez admits the primary weakness of his theory—lack of evidence of a bite or
scratch. In those days, rabies was well known as to causes and symptoms, including itching and
other sensations that could affect an entire limb or side of the body. How could Moran and his
staff ignore such symptoms in a patient?
And what of Poe’s cat, dearly loved but left behind in the Bronx over three months
earlier? Guiltless was the pet Caterina, who, uninfected and showing no sign of rabies, died of
starvation when deserted by Clemm after Poe’s death.
In short, there is no need to whitewash° the self-destructive behavior of this literary
genius and major American poet, critic, and teller of tales.
Burton R. Pollin
Robert F. Benedetto
Bronxville, New York
September 20, 1996
The writers are, respectively, professor emeritus of English, City University of New York, and an
associate film professor at the University of South Carolina.
READING 4
“Rabies Death Theory”
from The New York Times, September 30, 1996
To the Editor:
Contrary to a September 23 letter, I do not “admit” that the lack of bite or scratch is a
weakness in my theory that Edgar Allan Poe may have died of rabies encephalitis.
Data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that over the
past 20 years in the United States there have been 33 reported cases of human rabies, yet only 24
percent of these victims could recall an appropriate history of animal exposure. Bat-related
subtypes of rabies have been identified in 15 cases of human rabies since 1980, although patient
contact of any sort with bats could be documented in only 7 of these patients.
A diagnosis is not always easy or straight-forward. The incubation period1 in humans
may be as long as a year, if the inoculation2 is small and occurs on the hand or foot. Thus the
lack of evidence of a bite or scratch is not inconsistent with the diagnosis. Finally, although
physicians knew how rabies was transmitted at the time of Poe’s death, even at the time of Louis
Pasteur’s first use of a rabies “vaccine” in 1885 the causative agent, a rhabdovirus, was
unknown.3
I was saddened to hear of the fate of Caterina, Poe’s cat, yet nowhere have I suggested
that Poe contracted rabies from her, although it is worth noting that there was no available
vaccine for pets at that time.
R. Michael Benitez, M.D.
Baltimore, Maryland
September 26, 1996
The writer is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
Questions for “Four Readings About Poe’s Death”
Reading Check
1. Make a time line of Poe’s last days, based on the information in the biography “Poe’s
Final Days.”
2. Summarize the evidence cited to support Dr. Benitez’s theory in the article (“Poe’s Death
Is Rewritten as Case of Rabies, Not Telltale Alcohol”).
3. According to Burton R. Pollin and Robert E. Benedetto, what is the major weakness of
Dr. Benitez’s theory?
4. What is the main idea of the letter by Pollin and Benedetto?
a. Poe has been unjustly accused of being an alcoholic.
b. There is a great deal of evidence that Poe’s death was due to alcoholism.
c. Poe’s cat could not have bitten him and given him rabies.
d. Poe was a great writer, but he had human faults.
5.
What is the strongest evidence Dr. Benitez presents in his letter to defend his theory?
a. Rabies has a long incubation period, and many victims do not remember being
attacked by an animal.
b. There was no available vaccine for pets at the time of Poe’s death.
c. During Poe’s lifetime, doctors knew how rabies was passed on.
d. Louis Pasteur first used a rabies vaccine in 1885.
6. What information in the biography could support Dr. Benitez’s theory that rabies caused
Poe’s death?
a. It had been raining, and Poe may have suffered from exposure.
b. Dr. Moran stated that Poe sweated and addressed "imaginary objects on the
walls."
c. Poe was so ill that he was taken to the hospital.
d. No one knows where Poe was the week before he appeared at the tavern.
7. Which of the following statements that contrast the biography with Pollin and
Benedetto’s letter is not true?
a. The biography states that Dr. Moran eventually claimed Poe didn’t die from
drinking too much, but the letter states that Dr. Moran provided evidence for
this theory.
b. Pollin and Benedetto refer to Poe’s letters as evidence, but the biography does
not.
c. The biography does not discuss the rabies death theory, but the letter does.
d. The letter does not refer to Joseph Walker’s description of Poe, but the biography
does.
8. Which statement is the most important similarity between the article and Dr. Benitez’s
letter?
a.
b.
c.
d.
Both inform the reader that Dr. Benitez is an assistant professor of medicine.
Both use statistics as support.
Both point out that the lack of a bite or scratch does not weaken the rabies death theory.
Both state that only highly skilled doctors can diagnose rabies.
9.
Which of the following statements is the best synthesis of the information in these four
sources?
a.
b.
c.
d.
Poe was a tortured genius.
Poe’s symptoms could point to several different causes of death.
All theories should take into account that Poe died drunk.
Poe’s illness would have been correctly diagnosed by modern doctors.
Constructed Response
Imagine that you are writing a biography of Poe. Write the last few paragraphs of your book, in
which you tell about Poe’s death. In your discussion, synthesize the information from the four
sources by paraphrasing the ideas and comparing and contrasting the points. End your account
by drawing your own conclusions from the information.