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Doctor says Poe died of rabies, not a drunken binge

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From: Chicago Sun-Times
Date: 19960912
Author:MATT CRENSON

Edgar Allan Poe didn't die drunk in a Baltimore gutter, according to the first scientific study of the writer's final days. The evidence suggests that rabies killed him.

Dr. R. Michael Benitez, a cardiologist whose office is a block from the writer's grave, said it's true that Poe was seen in a bar on Lombard Street on an October day in 1849, delirious and possibly wearing someone else's dirty clothes. But Poe wasn't drunk, he said.

"I think Poe is much maligned in that respect," said Benitez, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Poe entered ...

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