What is the least common way to die?
I think about the way Edgar Allan Poe died. The writer had been missing for days, no one knew where he was, and all that was known about him was that he had taken to alcohol and spent his days going from bottle to bottle. When finally, after a week, one of his friends, "Dr. Joseph Snodgrass," found him on the side of the road, completely drunk, wearing shabby clothes that weren't his—uncharacteristic of the writer, given that he always wore a suit—he had absolutely no memory of what had happened. He was taken to a nearby hospital, regained consciousness for a few minutes and then passed out for hours, until his last words: "God, help my poor soul." He died. A death certificate was never issued, and a local newspaper declared that the writer had died of "cerebral congestion." The reason for his death has been debated for centuries, from the most obvious alcoholism or tuberculosis, to the fact that Poe was the victim of a custom of the ...
