Poe death mystery solved?

There have been many theories as to how the American Gothic poet and author Edgar Allan Poe met his death. Some say he was killed as a result of a drink or opium binge, others that his depression caused him to commit sucide. There are other, stranger theories that he was suffering from rabies, epilepsy, diabetes or that he was the victim of a "cooper" gang. These were gangs of thugs, in pay to politicians, who beat up strangers on the street to force them to vote for their employer.

An American writer, Matthew Pearl researched Poe's death for three years whilst writing his book, The Poe Shadow. He thinks that he knows the reason Poe died so young, and also why he suffered from amnesia, hallucinations and fits: brain cancer. This article in the Observer newspaper explains how he came to his conclusion and it involves something dear to Poe's own heart, namely digging up a corpse.

When Poe's body was exhumed to be moved to a better spot in the cemetery, observers talked about being able to see his shrunken brain.

It was described as being 'dried and hardened in the skull' in an 1878 article in the St Louis Republican newspaper, whereas a letter in the Baltimore Gazette claimed that: 'The cerebral mass... evidenced no sign of disintegration or decay, though, of course, it is somewhat diminished.'

But the brain, as a pathologist whom Pearl consulted pointed out, is one of the first parts of the body to rot away. What the people who saw the corpse saw might well have been a calcified (hardened) brain tumor. This tumor would have been responsible for Poe's mood swings, his thirst, his depressions and erratic behaviour. But it was these strange moods and feelings which produced many of his memorable works, so I will agree with poe himself when he says,

"Never to suffer would never to have been blessed."