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I was reading about haunted asylums and came across the Lima one, in Ohio.

While reading one man's accounts of visiting and exploring the place, I read a part about vampire lore and TB (tuberculosis). I hadn't heard that theory before, but thought it was interesting. Here is what he had to say on it.

"Tuberculosis is a severe upper respiratory infection that has been killing for millenia. In the 1800s and early 1900s it was called consumption, after the way the symptoms slowly consumed a victim. Vampire legends are thought to have been inspired by TB, which left a patient weak, flushed, and barely conscious; some assumed that a vampire was feeding on them. In the United States tuberculosis was such a steady epidemic that clinics dedicated to the treatment of the highly contagious disease were built apart from regular hospitals. In Ohio, the legislature decreed that every county have its own TB ward; the one in Athens County, for instance, was located on the grounds of the Ridges mental hospital. This hospital was Allen County's TB ward. Tuberculosis is treatable with antibiotics and today only kills the very old and very young, and even then is rarely a problem in industrialized nations."


Anyone ever hear that before? I can see how one would make a connection, if one is superstitious and a simpleton.



http://www.forgottenoh.com/LimaTB/limatb.html

Yes I have read this before. People didn't understand the mechanism of diseases. They were superstitious and tied that to almost everything.

TB has not been eradicated in the United States though. When I was doing repite I went from having to get my TB test every two years to once a year because active cases were coming from Mexico with illegals. The lady at the health department told me so I didn't go to the main place to get my tests anymore because they were walking around in there.

I have never seen a cadaver of a person who died from that disease. That might be interesting but I don't think it is the source of the legends, just a contributing factor to the legends; one of many.

Remember, TB used to be known as consumption in the days of olde.....

During the 1800s, consumption, or pulmonary tuberculosis, was credited with one out of four deaths. Consumption could kill you slowly over many years, or the disease could come quickly and end your life in a matter of weeks. ........ The victim becomes pale, stops eating, and literally wastes away. At night, the condition worsens because the patient is lying on their back, and fluid and blood may collect in the lungs. During later stages, one might wake up to find blood on one's face, neck, and nightclothes, breathing is laborious, and the body is starved for oxygen...........

Anyway, this is the disease that lead to the story of Mercy Brown; I am sure you read about her in other threads.

Reference and further reading:

Mercy Brown, the Rhode Island Vampire

You beat me on this so ill post what i had to say :)
TB was all so called the consumption and in some parts of the US.People were actually thought to be vampires.And they were buried in unmarked graves in fear that they would come back and take you as well even got so bad that they burnt the heart and you drank the ashes.

This Is Something New, I Wonder How Without Marks Of Any Kind They Would Connect It To Vampires

The reason bite marks would not be significant is because people of the colonies, at that period in time, were not familiar with Vampires or the Lore that went along with it. It was after the breakout of TB/Consumption that, due to the signs and symptoms that the bodies had (both during the stages of the disease and death process), the possibilty of them being vampires (for an explanation) was suggested by immigrants who were familiar with vampire lore.

The majority of people during that period of time did not understand the signs and symptoms of certain medical conditions, the process of death, so there would be no reason for them to question the validity of it if someone told them that the signs and symptoms of TB (or consumption) were those that coincided signs and symptoms of those deemed to be Vampires.

As well, there is nothing specific in Vampire Lore that says all Vampires will have bite marks--they are just one of the signs to look for.

I do not see how they can connect it to vampires .. LOL I mean my sister has TB and she treated for it with meds, yet no vampires around that had a part in it, just a disease some have the misfortune to get.

You need to read the article to understand that we are talking about the disease as it was understood over 100 years ago and the reasons WHY--during the 1800's when people did not fully understand about the signs and symptoms of consumption (or TB as it is NOW called) and the process of death--, these symptoms were deemed to be similar to the signs and symptoms of those considered to be vampires.

Yes indeed... what could the possible connection be between a disease like tuberculosis and a supposedly blood-sucking vampire? How in hell could two such completely disparate vampiric charcteristics have anything at all to do with one another?

Oh... there is an answer alright. And it leads right to the truth regarding who and what the Slavic Vampire actually was... and still is.


To quote from the above question here: "Vampire legends are thought to have been inspired by TB, which left a patient weak, flushed, and barely conscious; some assumed that a vampire was feeding on them."

Remember... in the original legends, the victim (patient) was left "weak, flushed, and barely conscious." Those were the actual historic symptoms of a vampire's "victims." Well, putting superstitious and medically primitive assumptions aside, is there any other condition that might better explain such symptoms?

Yes... there certainly is... one in particular that was already concluded by the Romanian Gypsies at the time, and were included in the original accounts as well.

"Gypies thought of the vampire as a sexual entity. The male vampire was believed to have such an intense sexual drive that his sexual need alone was sufficent to bring him back from the grave. His first act usually was to return to his widow, whom he engaged in sexual intercourse. Nightly visits could ensue over a period of time, with the wife becoming exhausted and emaciated."

-- -- The Vampire Book, J. Gordon Melton, 1999; pp. 616-617(emphasis added)


"The vampire of folklore is a sexual creature, and his sexuality is obsessive– indeed, in Yugoslavia... he is apt to wear out his widow with his intentions, so that she too pines away, much like his other victims."

-- Vampires, Burial and Death: Folklore and Reality; P. Barber, 1988; p. 9


"The sexual nature of the act is plainly indicated in the following examples. Heinrich von Wlislocki*, in his researches into Roumanian superstitions tells us: ...With young people it (The Nosferat) indulges in sexual orgies until they get ill and die of exhaustion. It often happens that women are impregnated by this creature and bear children..."

- On the Nightmare, E. Jones, pp. 117-118 (emphasis added)
* a noted Austrian Gypsologist


"Mullos (Gypsy word for Vampire) also return to satisfy their prodigious sexual appetites... They are so insatiable that their human partners are likely to weaken and become ill with exhaustion."

- The Complete Vampire Companion (R Guiley, pp. 9-10) (emphasis added)



And there you have it: the real reason for the tuberculosis-like symptoms of a vampire's attentions to his quite-willing "victims" was due entirely to their multiorgasmic exhaustion following days of non-stop sexual communion. And it was this that provoked an intense and bitter hatred and jealousy in normal males that had them perverting the truth and turning the wonderful facts into vicious lies that vilified this uniquely sexual male race and had them portrayed instead as "evil," undead, bloodsucking "vampires" intent on victimizing sweet, unsuspecting, pure, chaste, Christian females. This smear campaign was done so as to scare women away from such truly special males... and this campaign has worked so well that these completely baseless lies have become the "truth" of who and what the Vampire is believed to be... even today.

Oh... and the reason why no puncture marks were mentioned? Simply because... hello... there were none.

That's right... none.


Gotta start investigating the actual accounts, people, instead of assuming fiction to be factual.

"As well, there is nothing specific in Vampire Lore that says all Vampires will have bite marks--they are just one of the signs to look for."


Well yea, because hell, look at THE LOST BOYS. ;) He just drank the stuff and voila! Vamp!

True about the connection with Consumption and Vampires.Because people feared and fear what they do not know....the symptoms of TB were much like the signs of vampirism....to people back then.They had no idea what caused these symptoms...remember back then they didn't have vast knowledge of things.They went by word of mouth on alot of things...not medical journals...or newspapers or even the net.Receding gums and loss of skin color to them was signs of vampirism...not consumption/TB.

This is also what started the lore of the vampire. I have the blood disorder porphyria.And for many years because of the symptoms this carry's reseeding gum's and discolored teeth.
more about it here.
Porphyrias are a group of inherited or acquired disorders of certain enzymes in the heme biosynthetic pathway
refrence here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyria

In 1985 biochemist David Dolphin proposed a link between the rare blood disorder porphyria and vampire folklorehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire

Yes I have read about that a few times and there was just cmethng about on monsterquest last month, pretty sure it was called vampire something and there was a lot of talk of TB and the connection to what people believed to be Vampires.

The episode on MonsterQuest that you are referring to, LadyDarkRayne, was titled, "Vampires in America". The string, which you started earlier this month, is still open, so if anyone wants to take a look at it they can go here:

History channel Monstersquest- Vampires

It's not on History Channel's upcoming show calender, but with Halloween just around the corner, I wouldn't doubt that it will be on again sometime in October. The show pretty much leaves you with many unanswered questions, but it's interesting to watch nonetheless.

I have read something like this before but I honestly never got it.


Although, this honestly wouldn't be the most ludicrious thing I've heard regarding how people become vampires.

Victims suffered the most during the night and woke up coughing; bloody spittle gathered at the corners of their mouths; there was blood on their bedclothes. Ghastly in appearance, they seemed to be walking corpses, with their lives draining away.

"The symptoms very much mimic what you think a vampire attack would do," Bell remarked.

The patients, with their emaciated forms, crimson lips and sunken eyes, fed the theory that the evil in the corpse must be killed. And while the living looked as though they were dying, after they did die of tuberculosis (or consumption, as it was also called) they seemed to grow, Bell explained. Their corpses would appear to gain weight when they began to bloat, their nails would curl and their hair would grow.

Taken from Here

I think the combination of before and after death body responses are what gave the lore merit.

Tuberculosis it`s just one of the illnesses that vampirism was suppose to be explained.
However the myth is far too old and too widespread for considering tuberculosis as it`s source.
However vampirism it was used in some movies like a metaphor of an illness who consumes the body and the personality of a human being.

The subject is not new but it`s nice that you put it in discution here.