On this day in 1849, Edgar Allan Poe died in a Baltimore hospital. Despite his macabre literary genius, his life was short, and he was largely unhappy.
Poe’s death left a mystery that has lingered for more than a century. No death certificates seemed to be filed, and a local newspaper reporter described Poe’s cause of death as “congestion of the brain,” supposed to be a euphemism for alcohol poisoning. Aside from alcoholism, historians, and biographers suggested alternative causes of death ranging from lesions on the brain, epilepsy, and tuberculosis to cholera, syphilis, and even rabies.
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