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Once upon a time, people blamed tuberculosis on vampires.
Seriously.
In this Public Health Is Weird episode, we head to 1892 Rhode Island, where the deaths of several members of one family led to an exhumation, a suspected vampire, and a truly horrifying attempt at a cure. The real culprit was tuberculosis.
We explore the strange connection between TB and vampire folklore, the discovery and treatment of tuberculosis, a messy Nobel Prize controversy, and a bigger question: Why do humans reach for supernatural explanations when something frightening happens that we can't explain?
Vampires, tuberculosis, human psychology, and somehow, Dr. Eeks' great grandfather and groundhog grease.
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Sources used in the podcast are listed below and in my blog here.
Food for the Dead, by Michael Bell
Mysterious, medieval child vampire, The Independent
Consumptive Chic, by Carolyn Day
Smithsonian Magazine, Kat Eschner, March, 2017
CDC MMWR, 1982
Streptomycin, American Chemical Society, 2014
World's Top Infectious Killer, Science Alert, 2025
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