Text: Dr. Henry S. Tanner, “Poe's Death Trance,” Sunday Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL), vol. XVII, no. 315, February 3, 1889, p. 10, cols. 1-2

[page 10, column 1:]

CHICAGO, ILL, Feb. 1 — To the Editor. — A twofold object prompts me to intrude myself upon your readers: 1. I desire to call the attention of the public to a few facts in connection with the demise of the author of “The Raven” which I think have a deeper significance than has ever been attributed to them; facts which, when interpreted in the light of Poe's own statement that he was for many years subject to catalepsy, or *death trance,” go far to disprove the damaging allegations of his enemies, who have through the press asserted that he died a shameful death.

2. If the conclusions drawn from the facts are logical, and catalepsy, not drunkenness, caused the poet's death, then they clearly point to the necessity of more profound study of metaphystical [[metaphysical]] science, for to this science alone can we look with any degree of hope or confidence for a solution of the mysteries surrounding the “death trance” — so often mistaken for death itself, by the votaries of a purely physical science.

“To be buried alive,” wrote Poe, “is beyond all question the most terrific of all extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere humanity.”

We are a fast people — we live fast and die fast — and undertakers conduct their business in strict conformity with the spirit of the times. How many are annually borne to premature graves because of our want of knowledge whereby to detect the counterfeit of death from the real, only the records of eternity can reveal. There has come under my observation in the last three months (press) reports of

SIX CASES OF SUSPENDED ANIMATION,

two in the first half of January. All were prepared for burial, and fortuitous circumstances alone prevented live inhumation.

The proper analysis of the question “How did Poe die?” has for its object then not only the relieving the name of one of the most commanding figures in American journalism from the odium that, like a pall of blackness, has so long enshrouded it, but it is hoped and believed that the presentation of the strong presumptive evidence (largely in the poet's own language), which goes to show that he died as he had lived, cataleptic, will subserve the purpose of calling the attention of the people to the danger of ‘live burial,” also the necessity of devising means (legislative or otherwise) whereby the barbarous custom may consigned to the limbo of oblivion.

That the author of “The Raven” was gloomy and unhappy soul, many of his writings attest; that his life was stormy there is abundant evidence to prove. These environments have been attributed to his poverty, his sensitiveness and his bitter struggles with an appetite for strong drink; but in the light of investigations made in the hope of solving some of the mysteries surrounding catalepsy, I am forced to the conclusion that the poet's “intolerable sorrow” had another and far deeper cause than poverty, drunkenness, or the cullumnies [[calumnies]] of his enemies.

We have it from the pen of the poet that the dread of being “buried alive” haunted his sleeping and waking hours, and it was this horrible dread, no doubt, which veiled his spirit in the gloom of one long. dark, tempestuous night, and won for him the appellation of “The Poet of Sadness.

Dr. John Moran, the attending physician of Poe in his last hours, made careful inquiries concerning -the poet's movements previous to his arrival at the Washington University Hospital, where he died, and he unhesitatingly and emphatically pronounced false the stories that have been published of Poe's death having been caused by drink. He was brought to the hospital by a hackman, who had found him in a state of profound stupor on the wharf at Leight street, New York City. Dr. Moran, net recognizing his patient in the old and ill-fitting garments in which he was clad, thought, at first sight, that

POE'S HELPLESSNESS

was due to drunkenness, as can be inferred from his interrogation to the hackman: “Is he intoxicated?” To which the hackman answered: “There is no smell of liquor about him.” At that moment he handed the Doctor a card bearing Poe's nine, when he at once became deeply interested in the case and succeeded in restoring the poet to consciousness. Poe on being informed by Dr. Moran that he was extremely ill was very much surprised to learn where he was, being unable to give any account of his illness, the duration of which he had no idea, and declared that his condition was the result of no act of his own.

Poe died at 1 a m. Oct. 7, 1849. Having investigated the cause of his death, Dr. Moran gave it as his opinion that the poet's elegance of person had aroused the cupidity of certain low characters who infested the neighborhood of Leight [[Light]] street wharf; that they had seized and drugged him, and then, having stripped him of his elegant attire, substituted old and cast off clothing, and carried him to the wharf, where remained all night in profound stupor.

The theory of drugging is far more feasible than that of suicide, but Moran's opinion stands on no firmer basis than mere conjecture, of and would not stand the test of a searching analysis. Why should thieves spend time waiting for the slow operation of a drug to induce insensibility when (if that condition were deemed necessary) the steel knuckles, or other weapon (generally available with a rough) would accomplish the object more speedily?

Poe has left on record suggestions of a theory to the cause of his death; he speaks of himself as a “wretch fore-doomed,” and from these suggestions (coupled with the precautions taken life to avert that doom) we gather facts of assurance that effectually negative both the drugging and suicidal hypothesis. The poet was far from being a novice in the healing art; was no stranger to medical lore.

Probably no man in his day or generation had more profound knowledge of catalepsy, gathered net only from the text-books on physics, but from years of study of the physical and metaphysical manifestations of the disease to his own person. No one acquainted with the incidents preceding and accompanying the last pours of the poet's mortal career, can read his essay on “Premature Burials” without the conviction being forced upon him that there was

SOMETHING PROPHETIC

in the thought that he was “wretch foredoomed.” Poe, although dead, yet speaketh; he speaks in no uncertain sound as to the cause of his death. He says: “What I have to tell is of my own actual knowledge, of own positive and personal experience.

For several years I have been subject is attacks of a singular disorder which the so physicians have agreed to term catalepsy, in default of a better title.

“Although both the immediate and predisposing causes, and even the actual diagnosis of the disease is still mysterious, its obvious and apparent character is sufficiently well understood,

“The varieties seem to be chiefly of degree Sometimes the patient lies for a day only, or for shorter period, in a species of exaggerated lethargy.

“Then again, the duration of the trance is for weeks, even for months, while the closest scrutiny and the most vigorous tests fail to establish material distinction between the state of sufferer and what we conceive of absolute death. The unfortunate, whose first attack should of the extreme character, would almost inevitably be consigned alive to the tomb. My case differed in no essential particular those mentioned in medical books In that I endured there was no physical suffering, but of mental distress an infinitude. My fancy grew charnel. I talked of worms, of tombs, and epitaphs. I was lost in revery death, and the idea of premature burial held continual possession of my brain.

“The ghastly danger to which I was subjected haunted me day and night. In the former the torture of meditation was excessive; in the latter, supreme. When the grim darkness overspread the earth, then with very horror of be thought I shook, shook as the quivering plumes for the hearse. When nature could endure the wakefulness no longer, it was with a struggle that I consented to sleep. I shuddered to reflect upon awaking I might find myself the tenant of a grave. And when finally I sank into slumber, it was only to rush at once into a world of phantasms, and these extended their influence far into my waking hours. My nerves became thoroughly unstrung, and I fell a prey to perpetual horror.

“I hesitated to ride or to walk or to [column 2:] indulge in any exercise that would carry from home. In fact, I no longer dared trust myself out of the immediate presence of those who were aware of my proneness to catalepsy, lest, falling into one of my usual fits, I should be buried before my real condition could ascertained. I doubted the care, the fidelity my dearest friends; I dreaded that, in some trance of more than customary duration, they might be prevailed upon to

REGARD ME AS INCURABLE

I even went so far as to fear that, I occasioned much trouble, they might be glad consider my very protracted attack as sufficient excuse for getting rid of me altogether. It in vain they tried to reassure me by the most solemn promises. I exacted the most solemn oaths that, under no circumstances, would they bury me until decomposition had so materially advanced as to render further preservation impossible.

“And even then my mortal terrors would listen to no reason, would accept no consolation entered into a series of elaborate precautions. Among other things, I had the family vault remodeled as to admit of being readily opened from within.

“There were arrangements also for the admission of air aud light, and convenient receptacles for food and water within immediate reach of the coffin intended for my reception. This coffin was warmly and softly padded, was provided with a lid fashioned upon principle of the vault door. “

”Besides all this, there was, suspended from the roof of the tomb, large bell, rope of which it was designed should extend through A hole in the coffin and be fastened to one of the hands of the corpse. But alas! What avails the vigilance against destiny of man?

“Not even these wall contrived securities suffered to save from the uttermost agonies of ing inhumation a wretch to these agonies foredoomed.”

Aside from the poet's statement that his last illness was caused by no act of his own we left to conjecture as to its character aud cause.

Assuming, (as I think we have a right to do), that Catalepsy ended his mortal career, and that the antecedent causes and attendant symptoms were approximately the same as those which characterized former attacks of the same character, then the description previously given in poets language of his own “positive and personal experiences” with his life-long malady, supplies the place in a pre-eminent degree of more direct and positive statement from the lips of the dying min. Had the affirmation that illness was caused by no act of his been followed up with questions as to his feelings and experiences the night previous on the wharf. wet have reasonable ground for believing that the reply would have been the same as, similar to, the following quotation descriptive a past attack. “I was quickly and impetuously smitten. I grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so fell prostrate all at once.

“Then all was void, and black, and silent, and nothing became the universe. Total annihilation could be no more.” So also the awakening to consciousness on the wharf can, no doubt, with a slight addition, be best described in the poet's own language: “Just as the day dawns

THE FRIENDLESS AND HOUSELESS BEGGAR,

who roams the street through the long desolate night; just so tardily, just so wearily, just so charily came back the light of my soul to me,” in the early dawn of the intervening period.

The popular conception of Poe is that he was a man of sadly perverted habits in life, as well as a suicide in death.

Poe's own denial of the former accusation (which few can read without believing), coupled with the strongly pronounced testimonials of his hosts of friends (N. P. Willis with the rest), who have unequivocally declared him to be a “pattern of social and domestic worth,” are, it seems to me, amply sufficient to warrant one clothing the memory of the man of “intolerable sorrow” in the broad mantle of charity. The allegation that the poet died suicide no person competent to weigh evidence will be satisfied to accept in the face of the dying man's affirmation that his illness was “caused by no act of his own,” Dr. Moran's denial of the accusation, and the hackman's statement that there was “no smell of liquor about him.

How, then, did he die?

From the evidence submitted, let the reader judge for himself.

I am often asked: Is there no means known to science whereby the counterfeit of death can be detected from the real? In answer I am compelled to make the humiliating confession that not a man in all the crowds that frequent the halls of science can detect so much as technical difference, Schools of medicine have faith only in so much of human nature as can be seen, weighed, dissected, and put in a crucible. They deal with effects only, to antecedent causes they are blind. The realm of mind, separate and distinct from matter, is to them a nonenity [[nonentity]]. As they can not find mind, nor take cognizance of its mysterious workings by their material methods of investigation, they say it dons not exist as an entity; or, if it does, there is no possisible [[possible]] means of knowing that it does. The materialistic philosopher can never solve the mysteries of the “death trance.’ The secret workings of the mind (which there is abundant evidence to prove are augmented and intensified a hundred fold in trance conditions) can never be taken cognizance of by the microscope, the scalpel, or the crucible. Poe says of this condition: “In all that I endured there was no physical suffering, but

OF MORAL DISTRESS AN INFIFITUDE “

“Moral distress” comes not in the range of physical science. It belongs to the domain of metaphysics, and to metaphysics we must look for a solution of the mysteries surrounding the death trance. Suspended animation is alarmingly on the increase. What is the cause? This is notably the age of opiate medication.

The calomel and blood-letting age came to an ignoble death two decades of years since.

In this age the hypodermic sponge has taken the place of the lancet, and with scarcely less disastrous results. The best informed physicians are agreed that pain arises from an effort nature to throw off disease, and take the unassailable position that true therapeutics consist in the use of such agents as are best calculated to assist nature in her efforts Not so with a large majority of the modern M. D.'s. A patient suffering from an attack where pain is a prominent symptom, the fashionable physician no sooner called than opium, in some of its forms, is administered. Thus, instead of assisting nature to throw off disease, he administers a knock-down blow at the outset.

The patient is relieved of the pain, and is deluded into the belief that he has been benefited. What really happens? The seeds of disease, to expel which the vital forces were making AD effort, remain.

The effect of the opium is added to the original disease, and is usually far more maglignant [[malignant]] and dangerous than the trouble for which the opium was administered.

In a short time nature again makes the effort expel intruders: the physician again prescribes opium, and so on for days, perhaps weeks, and months together; the inevitable result of which is, the patient 18 8000 wrecked on the rugged shore of that sea, called Nervous Disease The opium habit follows, and all know the appalling result Under the influence of these body and soul destroying agents, the mind loses its vigor, sometimes to imbecility; the nervous system loses its sensibility; the circulation becomes weak:

THE TONE OF THE SYSTEM

is gradually lowered; the blood itself becomes impoverished that it is reduced to the temperature of the hibernating, or cold-blooded animals.

This condition has brought the subject to the half-way house — death, or the infinitely worse condition called catalepsy, which is a condition skin to the profound stupor of hibernating animals during their winter repose.

Suspended animation, resulting from the habitual use of opium, seldom comes without warnings of its approach. The advances from one stage to the other are gradual. The first manifestations, although masked, are unequivocal. The fits grow successively more and more distinctive, and endure each for longer term than the preceding.

Sometimes, without any apparent cause, the slave to the “opium habit” will sink, little by little, into a condition of semi-syncope. or half swoon, without and in this condition, without pain, ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, think, but with a dull lethargic consciousness life, and of those who surround them, they remain until the crisis of the malady restores them.

To all those who are thus undermining their physical and moral stamina by the use of opiates I would say: Beware! You know not the horrible fate that awaits you Every time you pander to your perverted appetite you strike blow at the “tree of life;” every blow hastens inevitable result, death or catalepsy. If it be the latter in an extreme form, God pity you; the probabilities are you will be borne to tomb while yet your spirit lingers in its earthly tabernacle.

Reader, in view of the prevalence of the death trance, and the consequent danger of “live burial,” is it not an appropriate time to ask: Shall we still go on and bury our dead with the reckless haste that characterizes the age, or shall we wait until decomposition. the only sure sign of death, shall justify the last rites of sepulture? H. S. TANNER, M. D.