Open Question
Poe was found on 3 October 1849 on a Baltimore street, delirious and wearing clothes that were not his own, and died four days later without ever coherently explaining what had happened to him. No contemporary autopsy report or medical record naming a cause of death survives, and the attending physician left only a brief, ambiguous published account decades later. Proposed causes advanced since include alcohol-related complications, rabies (a 1996 clinical review of his final symptoms matches rabies encephalitis closely), carbon monoxide or other poisoning, a brain tumor, and cooping, a period practice of forcing captives to vote repeatedly under threat, plausible given that he was found near a polling place on election day.
What would resolve this No contemporary written medical record is known to survive to recover at this distance; the case is generally treated by biographers as permanently unresolved rather than as an open forensic investigation awaiting new evidence.
OpenMedical history and Poe biographical scholarshipEncyclopaedia Britannica
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