The American author Edgar Allan Poe was found delirious and disheveled at a tavern by a friend who took him to the hospital. Although he was treated for apparent intoxication, Poe had stopped drinking altogether a month before his death after joining the Sons of Temperance, an Alcoholics Anonymous of its day. Poe was not coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition and why he was wearing clothes that were not his own. He died on October 7th, 1849, and repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death, though it is unclear to whom he was referring. All of the relevant medical records have been lost, including Poe's death certificate. The precise cause of Poe's death is heavily disputed. Theories as to what the cause of death include: sucde, murder, cholera, hypoglycemia, rabies, syphilis, influenza, brain tumor, and 'cooping'. Poe might have been a victim of 'cooping', a form of electoral fraud in which random citizens were kdnappd by 'cooping gangs' working for a political candidate and hold them in a room (the "coop") and ply them with alcohol or give them face beatings to force them to vote. Perhaps the hours leading up to his mysterious death may never be accounted for, as Poe himself suggested: “The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”
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song: "Come, rest in this bosom" -- Thomas Moore, Poe's favorite song.
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