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.8 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.”9 Although the terms were sometimes used euphemistically10 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 clad11 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.
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