Tuberculosis

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Folklore (Vampires and Witches)

Before the Industrial Revolution, tuberculosis may sometimes have been regarded as vampirism. When one member of a family died from it, the other members that were infected would lose their health slowly. People believed that this was caused by the original victim draining the life from the other family members.

Furthermore, people who had TB exhibited symptoms similar to what people considered to be vampire traits. People with TB often have symptoms such as red, swollen eyes (which also creates a sensitivity to bright light), pale skin and coughing blood, suggesting the idea that the only way for the afflicted to replenish this loss of blood was by sucking blood.

Another folk belief attributed it to being forced, nightly, to attend fairy revels, so that the victim wasted away owing to lack of rest; this belief was most common when a strong connection was seen between the fairies and the dead.  Similarly, but less commonly, it was attributed to the victims being "hagridden"—being transformed into horses by witches (hags) to travel to their nightly meetings, again resulting in a lack of rest.

TB was romanticized in the nineteenth century. Many at the time believed TB produced feelings of euphoria referred to as "Spes phthisica" or "hope of the consumptive". It was believed that TB sufferers who were artists had bursts of creativity as the disease progressed. It was also believed that TB sufferers acquired a final burst of energy just before they died which made women more beautiful and men more creative.

A TALE of VAMPIRES

The vampire/tuberculosis link exists in many other cases. When Capt Isaac Burton married in 1790 in Vermont he didn’t expect to be soon a widower. But soon after the wedding his bride, Rachel Harris, died of TB.

Eventually Burton married a second time, to Hilda Powel. But she, too, became ill with TB - although friends were convinced the cause was Rachel, returning as a vampire to kill the second wife.

Acting on advice, in February 1793 a thousand people gathered to watch Rachel’s body exhumed, whereupon vital organs were cut out to be fed to Hilda as a cure, and the body burned. Regardless of this, Hilda died in September.

On 5 Feb 1970 Franz von Poblocki in the Polish town of Kantrzyno, was buried in the local graveyard. Two weeks later, his son Anton also died, while other members of the family experienced debilitating illness and terrifying nightmares.

To the locals, the answer was clear. Even in the late 20th century, Franz had become a vampire, and was feeding on the souls of his family.

The family brought in a vampire hunter who beheaded Anton’s corpse and headed to the graveyard to exhume Franz. The undertaker immediately went to the priest, who tried to stop them, but that night, Franz was dug up and beheaded. The obvious cause of the deaths was TB, and the family and hunter were put on trial and found guilty. Though a court of appeal dropped the charges.

Today we are generally less superstitious of illness. But in the past we can say vampires existed in a sick society in more ways than one.

Published with kind permission of© Anthony North, November 2007. For more scary, interesting and puzzling facts please visit Beyond the blog, Vampires and Sickness and Diary of a writer and Anthony North

See also HISTORY OF TB and Fashion of TB

Atypical TB