During The Victorian Era, People Performed So-Called Vampire Autopsies To Cope With Fears Of Tuberculosis
On one chilly New England morning back in 1892, a group of men met up at a Rhode Island cemetery. Their goal? Unearthing a family of supposed vampires.
The men first focused on a woman named Mary Eliza Brown, who had passed away eight years prior of tuberculosis– also known as consumption. Mary’s remains were found to be partially mummified.
Then, the group set their sights on Mary’s oldest daughter, who was aptly named Mary Olive. She also died of consumption not very long after her mother. All that remained in the daughter’s grave were bones and hair.
The last family member that the group exhumed was Mary’s youngest daughter, Mercy. Mercy had been just nineteen-years-old when she died of consumption two months prior.
And to the groups’ surprise, Mercy’s body appeared to have been bizarrely well-preserved– a well-known indicator of vampirism at the time.
A medical examiner, Harold Metcalf, was also on-site with the group of men that day. He went on to perform an autopsy on Mercy– a supposed vampire– right in the middle of the cemetery.
Harold first cracked Mercy’s chest and removed her heart and liver. Both organs were found to be in typical human form.
Her overall body was, too, since the frigid winter had slowed natural decomposition processes.
Then, the medical examiner decided to slice into Mercy’s heart, and what spilled out was blood.
Andrey Kiselev – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
Unlike many people of his time believed, Harold already knew that clotted blood was a normal occurrence during that stage in Mercy’s decomposition.
So, what brought him to the Rhode Island cemetery that day was not a mission of proving vampirism. No, he actually intended to debunk the superstition altogether.
During the late nineteenth century, scientists discovered that tuberculosis had bacterial origins. However, for decades, popular folklore in Rhode Island had continued to spread the idea that tuberculosis– or consumption– was inherited.
Moreover, people believed that the disease could actually drain the life and blood out of relatives who came after tuberculosis sufferers– essentially leading to myths of vampires.
Interestingly, though, the myth was more so a product of “desperation” rather than ignorance, according to Meredith Sellers, who works at the Mutter Museum.
In 1892, Harold and countless other medical examiners were able to explain tuberculosis using medical science.
And during exhumations, they were able to use autopsy tools to point out exactly where the disease wreaked havoc on organs.
But, there was still no cure for tuberculosis at the time, and the spread of folklore– even if known to be false– provided a sense of solace in blame rather than facing fears of the disease.
“People were trying anything to save their loved ones, even though, rationally, most people probably understood it was tuberculosis,” Sellers said.
So, even Harold’s own medical declaration that Mercy was not truly a vampire could not satiate the public. Instead, her bloody heart was actually set on fire in a ritual that was intended to save her older brother, Edwin. Edwin was already terribly ill with tuberculosis, though, and went on the die six weeks later.
Rhode Island was not the only state to witness such a denial of tuberculosis, either. In fact, there were eighty-six documented vampire autopsies conducted throughout the United States since 1784. And it is believed that there were many other exhumations that went unrecorded.
These instances of vampire discoveries usually lined up with tuberculosis outbreaks, particularly in New England during the nineteenth century. Then, folklore of vampirism spread, and the latest known vampire autopsy was conducted in Pennsylvania in 1949.
And honestly, it made sense that those seeking to identify the recently departed (and buried) as vampires ultimately found what they were looking for. Sometimes, exhumed bodies had fingernails, hair, and teeth that seemingly grew longer in spite of death.
Other times, dirt above grave sites appeared to be disturbed; bodies supposedly moved in their coffins, and– like Mercy’s case– blood still lay in the heart. Vampire hunters also cited bloody lips and gained weight as signs of the supernatural.
But now, it is well known that these post-mortem bodily changes are a normal part of the decomposition process. After death, the skin will shrink, which forces features such as nails and teeth to appear longer. Blood also separates, and the decaying process begins, which produces gasses that appear to bloat– or make a body “gain weight.”
Still, according to scientist Paul Barber who penned a 1987 study entitled “Forensic Pathology and the European Vampire,” these facts were simply irrelevant at the time.
“This understanding has not reached most of us yet. We do not choose to spend a great deal of time thinking about how our bodies will decay after death,” Barber said.
So, if anything, these vampire autopsies only underscore how during times of fear or uncertainty, many people often flock to folklore when they do not understand or want to accept gloomier explanations rooted in science.
In more recent times, this same phenomenon can be observed with the COVID-19 pandemic. But, instead of folkloric-inspired vampire autopsies, our digital age allowed for misinformation and conspiracy theories to run rampant.
If true crime defines your free time, this is for you: join Chip Chick’s True Crime Tribe
Last Year, She Was Last Seen Walking Around Her Tiny Town, But Then She Disappeared
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
More About:Freaky
Read This Next
