Before the 20th century in the United States, many people believed that tuberculosis, also known as consumption, was caused by deceased family members or ancestors returning as vampires to claim lives. Especially in the later stages of tuberculosis, symptoms such as rapid weight loss, paleness, and coughing up blood or pus led Americans at the time to firmly believe these were the effects of being drained of blood by a vampire.
One method of treating tuberculosis at the time involved exhuming the graves of deceased relatives to find the body that might have turned into a vampire, then driving a stake through its heart and burning it.
Did people really practice this superstition?
Yes, according to a report by the Yankee Express in 1790:
Isaac Burton, a deacon of a church in Manchester, Vermont, lost his wife Rachel to tuberculosis about a year or two after their marriage. A little over a year later, Burton remarried Hulda Powell, who within 18 months contracted the disease as well. Burton’s friends and family “concluded that the first wife had come back from the grave to feed on the lifeblood of Hulda, thereby causing her illness. They were convinced that if the first wife’s viscera were burned to ashes, Hulda could be healed."
In desperation, Burton agreed to exhume Rachel’s body and burn some of her now decaying organs to ashes. These efforts were in vain; Hulda died within a year.
Another instance occurred between 1883 and 1892 with the Brown family of Exeter, Rhode Island, where three out of five family members—mother Mary Eliza and two daughters, Mary Olive and Mercy—died from tuberculosis. With only his son Edwin left, George T. Brown, the head of the family, was advised by friends and neighbors that a vampire must be preying on his family, and if he didn’t act quickly, Edwin would be next. George eventually agreed, exhuming the bodies of his deceased wife and daughters to deal with them accordingly.
After exhuming the bodies, they found that his daughter Mercy’s corpse had not decomposed and her hair and nails had grown longer than when she was alive. The crowd concluded that the post-mortem growth confirmed she was a vampire, so they pierced her heart, removed and burned her liver, and fed the ashes as a medicine to the sick Edwin. However, this futile act did not save Edwin either.
In contrast, traditional Chinese medicine had a much deeper understanding of tuberculosis during the same period.
Tuberculosis, referred to as “lung consumption" in traditional Chinese medicine, was first mentioned in “The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine" (written before the Han dynasty, between 221 BC and AD 9), which documented clinical symptoms like “…emaciation of the flesh, fullness in the chest, difficulty in breathing, internal pain extending to the shoulders and back, fever, and muscle wastage…"
Zhang Zhongjing’s “Treatise on Febrile Diseases" during the Eastern Han dynasty recorded treatment methods.
Hua Tuo, in his “Zhongzang Jing – On Corpse Transmission" during the same era, recognized the contagious nature of tuberculosis. By the Sui dynasty, Chao Yuanfang’s “Zhubing Yuanhou Lun – On Corpse Transmission" explicitly stated that the disease could “revive after death and easily infect others, even to the extent of eradicating a family."
During the Tang dynasty, medical practitioners Wang Tao and Sun Simiao both identified lung consumption as a type of “worm disease." Ancient Chinese medicine often referred to what modern medicine calls “bacterial infectious diseases" as “worm diseases" because they recognized that a type of invisible “worm" could cause disease and infect others.
For instance, Chen Wuze’s “San Yin Ji Yi Bing Zheng Fang Lun – On Various Syndromes of Consumptive Disease" from the Song dynasty pointed out: “Although the symptoms are different, their root often involves worms." (Ancient Chinese medicine named the “worm" causing tuberculosis as “consumptive worm" or “phthisis worm.")
Lung consumption has always been a focal point in traditional Chinese medicine. Regardless of the effectiveness of treatments by medical practitioners over the dynasties, many invested their hearts and minds in research and meticulously recorded clinical observations.
Interestingly, in the 19th century, while some Americans still attributed tuberculosis to vampire attacks, Chinese physicians like Tang Rongchuan (1851-1897) in his “On Blood Syndromes" recorded: “…there are consumptive worms residing in the lungs, gnawing and damaging the lung tissues. The metal element ceases to resonate. The itch in the throat leads to incessant coughing, wheezing, and fever, making it a difficult case of consumptive disease to treat."
Renowned physicians of the same period, like Zhang Xichun (1860-1933), also documented many cases of tuberculosis, such as:
“…Fan from Y
anshan, over fifty years old, had chronic lung consumption. When it flared up, he would cough continuously, with slight shortness of breath. By late summer, the wheezing worsened significantly, with non-stop coughing day and night, and he coughed up a lot of blood. After more than ten days of treatment by a physician, the coughing and hemoptysis seemed to intensify, leaving him utterly exhausted. Fortunately, I had just returned from Cang to my hometown and was asked to diagnose and treat him. His pulse was large and slightly rapid, with the right pulse being particularly solid and forceful. His tongue coating was white and thick, verging on yellow. He complained of extreme heat in his heart and had bowel movements every two or three days. After the diagnosis, I concluded: ‘This is the heat of a warm disease, entrenched in the Yangming domain, oppressing the stomach qi causing it to rise rebelliously, hence the continuous coughing and wheezing, and repeated hemoptysis.’ …Therefore, I prescribed a dispersing formula: raw rehmannia (two liang), raw gypsum (one liang), anemarrhena (eight qian), licorice (one qian), wide rhinoceros horn (three qian, decocted separately and taken together), and notoginseng (two qian, finely powdered and taken with water) …After a month of such nourishment, the lung consumption significantly improved."
“…Sun from the neighboring village, around thirty years old, developed asthma since early summer. He would wheeze upon exertion, and even at rest, his breathing seemed constricted. After taking over fifty doses of medicine without improvement, the physician considered it incurable lung consumption. Hearing of my return, he sought my diagnosis and treatment. His pulse was floating and slippery, especially pronounced at the right cun and guan positions, indicating that wind and phlegm were mutually sticking and obstructing the lung orifices. I prescribed Ma Xing Gan Shi Tang: ephedra (three qian), almond (three qian), raw gypsum (one liang), licorice (one and a half qian), decocted in a soup and taken with roasted bitter melon seeds (two qian). One dose calmed the wheezing, and after a few more doses of phlegm-reducing and lung-moistening medicines with slight exterior-dispersing agents, he fully recovered. …"
In modern times, tuberculosis is a legally notifiable infectious disease, and once detected, a whole set of legal procedures and Western medical treatment SOPs are immediately initiated.
(translated by ChatGPT)
元毓說 