The Vampire of the Lungs

"The Vampire of the Lungs – How a lung disease created the American vampire panic" investigates the "New England Vampire Panic" of the 19th century. Long before Dracula, farmers in Rhode Island and Connecticut believed their families were being killed by the undead. The culprit was actually Tuberculosis (Consumption), a disease that made the victim look pale and drained of life. Author Emily Crypt details the exhumation of Mercy Brown in 1892. Her family dug up her body, found liquid blood in her heart (due to natural decomposition in the cold), and burned her heart to feed the ashes to her sick brother as a cure. "The Vampire of the Lungs" explains how pre-germ theory societies used folklore to make sense of contagions. It is a tragic story of grief and superstition, showing how the "vampire" was not a monster, but a misunderstood bacterium.