British writer, best known as the author of “The Ancient Mariner.” A poet, critic and philosopher of the Romantic period, he loved to talk and converse. He wrote little but the works he left are considered masterpieces of the English language.
He married and had a small family. Shuffling, flabby and irresolute in character, he had a 15-year opium habit. His drug problems seem to have begun when he was 18. Confined in the hospital for many months with rheumatic fever, he was given laudanum for the pain. He gradually became addicted to the opium and during his adult years, consumed as much as two quarts of laudanum a week. His poem “Kubla Khan” was probably written during drug use.
In April 1816, James Gillman, a physician was asked to take the poet into his London home to help him get clean of the opiate. Coleridge stayed with the Gillman’s until his death 18 years later. He never entirely gave up his habit, but the doctor kept him monitored with a small amount of morphine.
His health deteriorated toward the end of his life but his mind remained sharp and clear. He received his many visitors in a private parlor, always dressed in clerical black. During his last few months he was confined to bed and often in pain, which he tried to conceal.
Coleridge died at the Gillman home on 25 July 1834, Highgate, London. An autopsy showed that his heart nearly filled the left side of his chest and the right side was filled with fluid, suggesting hypertrophy and dilation due to aortic disease.
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