TB: Vampire or Human?

Our story begins with the Brown family. Within the small city of Exeter, Rhode Island, near what is now the city Providence, the story that inspired the Gothic novel Dracula was born. In 1892, farmer George Brown was running out of reasonable explanations for why his family members and many others in the Exeter community were falling mysteriously and rapidly ill, and why despite his best efforts to help their recovery, his attempts were to no avail. The late-night sweats, substantial weight loss, and persistent fever prevailed, taking the life of George Brown’s wife and two daughters. 

Fear spread throughout the villagers, and reason turned into madness, conjuring mythical explanations for the outbreak of sickness. Rumors spread that the dead were feeding off the living—particularly family members. If the afflicted had similar symptoms to those of their predecessors, it was a sign that the deceased were coming out of their graves and infecting the living, one by one, bite by bite. 

Sound familiar?

In fact, even in modern day the story of Mercy Brown lives on. “The New England Vampire Panic” went down in New England’s and Rhode Island’s history, and there are still whispers today that the grave of alleged vampires like Nelly L. Vaughn of West Greenwich being haunted. Most famously, Mercy Brown is believed to have inspired the character Lucy Westenra, the vampire victim in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, the worldwide Gothic horror phenomenon published in 1897. Additionally, Stoker wrote the novel during a time of British anxieties in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, where diseases like tuberculosis, cholera, and the bubonic plague were equally rampant in Europe. Vampires became something to fear, not just because of their blood-sucking abilities, but because of the social connotation that vampires bring a terrible illness to major cities like London, corrupting the un-infected “races” within Britain and bolstering an anti-immigrant attitude. 

Today, through our improved technology and science innovations, we know the outbreak in Exeter was likely tuberculosis, as the symptoms are too similar to disregard. However, the justification for diseases such as TB before modern medicine is fascinating to reflect upon due to how much it played a role in influencing the social and spiritual posture at that time.