Medicine of the Vampire

Medicinal Availability

The medicine of the old age was a world apart from what we have today -- that much, we know. There was only what people had available to them, to their belief system. Most of it was done to the detriment of the patient, unknowingly until it was far too late. Despite this, these "medicines" were used and, in my observation, inspire the vampire story to one extent or another. 

Leech Medicine

The leech was used as a mean of sucking the ailment from a patient. The blood that they need would be the cure for both parties: one gets a meal while the other winds up healthy. This was all in the name of bloodletting. To purge the entire body would naturally include the blood in the minds of very "spirituality over science" people in these times. Of course, spirituality and science often go hand in hand, but in the case of the leech, people often wound up with a replacement issue for the one they called in the doctor for. 

Typically, the site of the bite would end up infected without proper treatment, and the patient would pass away anyway. Sometimes, the active ailment they're fighting against wins in the battle with the bloodsucking nurses, and the body's blood is left drained. The vampire can drain or it can wholly dine, similar to these little creatures of blood. The vampire leaves their prey behind with bite wounds and a significant loss of blood, much like the leech therapy.

Corpse Medicine

The very nature of corpse medicine is vampiric. It was believed that whatever grieved you could be solved by consuming the very same or similar organ. Say you had an issue with your liver -- the doctors would then have the patient consume a healthy liver from a recently deceased. Now, if you had come down with a case of consumption where you were coughing up blood, the scientists may believe that there was something wrong with the blood itself, and you would then be instructed to drink or otherwise consume blood.

It was believed that this medicinal cannibalism would aid not only illness, but the entire person. Drinking fresh blood from a wise person was thought to give you a healthy mind. Drinking from a strong individual would give you a healthy body. The blood was the life force of people, and the life's necessity of the vampire. There is no doubt that traveling from afar just to see something like this take place would be mortifying, especially if you've heard the tales of the local vampire.