THE MORNING CALL — MARCH 28, 1892
The Result of a Curious Rhode Island Superstition.
There is an old Rhode Island superstition of the vampire of life and death. It is to the effect that after consumptives die [death from a wasting disease] members of the same family are slowly consumed by the same disease through the agency of a living tissue in the dead.
Within a few years, says a Providence dispatch to the New York Herald, George T. Brown of Exeter has been bereft of a wife and two daughters by consumption. The daughters were seized by the disease subsequent to the death of the mother. Three weeks ago his son began to fail rapidly. During the last few weeks Mr. Brown has been urged by people who expressed implicit faith in the old theory to open the graves of his wife and daughter.
Mr. Brown, getting no encouragement from the medical fraternity, yielded to their importunities Thursday afternoon, when an investigation was held under the direction of Dr. Harold Metcalf of Wickford. The bodies of the wife and two daughters were exhumed and an examination made, finding nothing but skeletons of the wife and oldest daughter. After examination of the body of the younger, which was buried nine weeks ago. Dr. Metcalf reported the body in a state of natural decomposition, with nothing exceptional existing. Then the doctor removed the heart and liver a quantity of blood was found, but this, he said, was just what might be excepted. The heart and liver were cremated.
From— The Morning Call. (San Francisco [Calif.]), 28 March 1892. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
