Happy Book Birthday and Another Cause of Death - Theory 2 - Rabies

Happy Book Birthday to my new decodable book for grades 5-9 - The Raven Remix: A Mashup of Poe Titles which became available on October 15 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You can also order it at bookshop.org and credit your favorite local bookstore. To read more about the book and to preview it on Net Galley, see last week's blog post entitled - The Raven Remix - Just In Time for Halloween and Dyslexia Awareness Month. If you read the book, please leave a review at any of those sites.

In celebration, I'm sharing excerpts from the background section. That part is not decodable. It's meant to be read to struggling students to provide background knowledge, or it can be shared with a general education classroom of middle school students who can read it independently. 

Poe's mysterious death is a mystery that has never been solved, but many fascinating theories have developed over the years. In 1996, a doctor named R. Michael Benitez was given a medical puzzle to solve during a clinical pathological conference. He was provided a patient’s name  - E.P., and a list of symptoms, which included lethargy, confusion, delirium, hallucinations, rapid erratic pulse rate, and shallow breathing, with death resulting within four days after admission to the hospital. Dr. Benitez concluded that the patient died of rabies.

 
The doctor was surprised to discover that the patient described to him was none other than the famous Edgar Allan Poe. Because he did not know the identity of the subject before giving his diagnosis, he was not influenced by any of the previous theories surrounding Poe’s death. However, without DNA evidence, his theory is impossible to prove. Poe also did not suffer from hydrophobia or fear of water, usually associated with rabies. Even so, the Maryland Medical Journal thought Dr. Benitiz’s solution was valid enough to publish in their September 1996 issue.

The hospital where Poe died diagnosed him as having encephalitis, but the specific cause was not given. One type of viral encephalitis that was common at the time Poe died was rabies. If a human is bitten by a mammal (dog, cat, bat) carrying the disease, they can develop rabies encephalitis. This condition leads to many of the symptoms Poe experienced. Read last week's blogpost and Theory #1 - Brain Tumor.

To find out more about the mysterious death of Poe, read my new book, The Raven Remix: A Mashup of Poe Titles. 

Sign up HERE for the Carolee Dean, Author newsletter and receive a FREE digital copy of my book, No Gift for Man. You will also receive monthly updates, book news, and FREEBIES.