In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, doctors of the Brown family in England could not explain why several Brown family members were dying. As a last resort they dug up all the bodies to discover only one that remained undecayed - that of Mercy Lena Brown. Her heart held fresh blood, so they cut it out, burned it, mixed the blood with ashes and water, and drank it, thinking that this would prevent further attacks. In fact there is far more evidence that people drank the blood of the dead, than that the dead drank the blood of the living. The practices were most common in Eastern Europe
