ELVIS
PRESLEY
On the
evening of August 16, 1977, Presley was scheduled to fly out of Memphis to
begin another tour. That afternoon, Ginger Alden discovered him in an
unresponsive state on his bathroom floor. According to her eyewitness account,
"Elvis looked as if his entire body had completely frozen in a seated
position while using the toilet
and then had fallen forward, in that fixed position, directly in front of it.
[...] It was clear that, from the time whatever hit him to the moment he had
landed on the floor, Elvis hadn't moved." Joel Williamson writes:
"For some reason — perhaps involving a reaction to the codeine and
attempts to move his bowels — he experienced pain and fright while sitting
on the toilet. Alarmed, he stood up, dropped the book he was reading, stumbled
forward, and fell face down in the fetal position. He struggled weakly and
drooled on the rug. Unable to breathe, he died." Attempts to revive him
failed, and death was officially pronounced at 3:30 p.m. at Baptist
Memorial Hospital.
Presley's
funeral was held at Graceland on Thursday, August 18. Outside the gates, a car
plowed into a group of fans, killing two women and critically injuring a third.
Approximately 80,000 people lined the processional route to Forest Hill
Cemetery, where Presley was buried next to his mother.
Questions over cause of death
Presley's
main physician, Dr. Nichopoulos, was
exonerated of criminal liability for the singer's death, the facts were
startling: "In the first eight months of 1977 alone, he had [prescribed]
more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines and narcotics: all in Elvis's
name." His license was suspended for three months. It was permanently
revoked in the 1990s after the Tennessee Medical Board brought new charges of
over-prescription.
Amidst
mounting pressure in 1994, the Presley autopsy was reopened. Coroner Dr. Joseph
Davis declared, "There is nothing in any of the data that supports a death
from a natural heart attack . In fact, everything points to a sudden, violent
heart attack brought on by a drug overdose ." Whether or not combined drug intoxication was in fact
the cause, there is no doubt that polypharmacy contributed significantly to
Presley's premature death.
A
meticulous dissection of the body ... confirmed [that] Elvis was chronically
ill with diabetes, glaucoma, and constipation. As they proceeded, the doctors
saw evidence that his body had been wracked over a span of years by a large and
constant stream of drugs. They had also studied his hospital records, which
included two admissions for drug detoxification and methadone treatments."
Therefore, Frank Coffey is of the opinion that a plausible cause of Elvis'
death is "a phenomenon called the Valsalva maneuver (essentially straining on the toilet
leading to heart stoppage — plausible because Elvis suffered constipation,
a common reaction to drug use)..." In similar terms, Dr Dan Warlick, who
was present at the autopsy, "believes Presley's chronic
constipation — the result of years of prescription drug abuse and
high-fat, high-cholesterol gorging — brought on what's known as Valsalva's
maneuver. Put simply, the strain of attempting to defecate compressed the
singer's abdominal aorta, shutting down his heart. In recent years some
apparent new evidence came out about his death. "
T E
X T C
O M P
R E H
E N S
I O N
01-Choose the correct sentence
according to the text:
a)Elvis died in Tennessee.
b)Valsalva maneuver is an
Elvis’ song.
c)Ginger Alden killed Elvis.
d)Elvis Presley died at
Baptist Memorial Hospital.
e)Elvis Presley died on the
evening of August 16.
02-________________was Elvis
Presley’s personal physician.
a)Ginger Alden b)Frank Coffey c)Dr Joseph Davis d)Joel Williamson e)Dr Nichopoulos
03-In the sentence: “the strain
of attempting to defecate compressed the singer’s abdominal aorta”, the
underlined word means:
a)breed b)race c)beget d)sort e)violent effort
04-_______________found Elvis
Presley dead.
a)Ginger Alden b)Frank Coffey c)Dr Joseph Davis d)Joel Williamson e)Dr Nichopoulos
05-In the sentence: “amidst
mounting pressure in 1994, the Elvis Presley autopsy was reopened”, the
underlined word means:
a)among b)although c)even d)nearly e)almost
