HUMAN VAMPIRES.

Evening Star, Issue 4285, 20 November 1876, Page 4

HUMAN VAMPIRES.

The ' Albany Argus' gives the following :—" Blood drinking has become * quite popular of late years, and many invalids daily visit the abbatoirs of New York for the purpose of drinking the warm blood of the ox. It is a fact, not so generally known however, that this appetite for blood increases upon those who indulge in it. "Women, who at first quaff with repugnance and some horror a wineglass of the warm crimson gore, gradually acquire a craving for it, and take down a tumblerful with evident relish. ' Parties under this spell almost invariably manifest a desire to try the effects of human blood. Two cases of this kind have been reported in New York. A young lady, belonging to a respectable family, suffered in health while devoting herself to her

academical studies. Her medical attendant, who vouches for the truth of the story, suggested blood-drinking. Permission and the necessary privacy was secured at the abattoir. Salutary effects were not long in following. The pallor left her cheek, her frame became more robust, and in ten months she gained 151b. in weight. FroTi having been a pale, uninteresting-looking girl, " ehe developed radiant beauty, and she married the young assistant of the medical adviser who had saved her life. Well acquainted with the means by which she had been restored, her husband encouraged her natural curiosity respecting the effects of various kinds of blood; and probably quite as much for the purpose of his own professional information* .as for the gratification of her own wish, he opened a small artery in his leg, and permitted her to suck the vital tide. An inordinate mania for her husband's, blood forthwith supervened. He gratified her cravings again and again until disgust for her became the predominent feeling of his mind; and after he had done himself a great amount of physical injury, he bade her a final adieu and sailed for Peru. The wretched young wife now lies oh a sick bed, and lives almost entirely on blood brought her from an abbatoir. She is a monomaniac on this subject, and had she the opportunity would undoubtedly become a vampire, and banquet perpetually on human blood. The other case was that of a woman of twentyrfive, threatened .with a decline. By the advice of a physician she took, four times a day, a tablespoonftd of cod-liver oil mixed in a mneglassful of blood...The woman was restored to health, ibut when she left off tak|ng"the~ cpd-liyer oil she continued taking the dose of blood. At this tinife her husband had met with an accident on the railway, and by this meansjhis wife got a taste of his blood —-and" from that time she became irregistably impelled- to repeat the taste. Absolute restraint had to be resorted to to atop her. She was brutalised by Jer unnatural inthrigenee." —~'