Why Did This Person Lose So Much Blood Through Small Wounds?

[LisaL]

I read a case concerning a girl, in the late 19th Century in Budapest, who was employed as a servant for a man and his group. One evening she was invited to a feast and was put to sleep with a drink. She awoke so weak she could barely walk, and she noticed strange pains in her limbs. On her right upper arm, her left thigh and above her navel were small, blood-red spots, and in the middle of these round spots, was a small opening. She assumed the men sucked out a large amount of her blood and she left the service because of this.

 

It sounds like she lost a huge amount of blood but the way it was described, these were only little wounds. It doesn't sound like any blood was flowing out her wounds when she woke up. Why not? It doesn't sound like they went for her arteries since she didn't mention she had any of these cuts on her neck, inside the elbow, forearm, etc.

 

So I'm wondering why she lost so much blood.

 

[pgrmdave]

Can you link us to the facts of the case?

 

I once read a case concerning a man in the mid 19th century who stitched together corpses and reanimated them. But there's no value in trying to figure out how it happened.

[LisaL]

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cHAiAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT37&lpg=PT37&dq=jews+budapest+blood+servant+%22so+weak%22&source=bl&ots=xcFLzbrqlU&sig=W7M69orEDrds0p0MthEZpBbDiOU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=L0cmVb-bC8Pdar3RgfAO&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=jews%20budapest%20blood%20servant%20%22so%20weak%22&f=false

[pgrmdave]

Is that book "The Evil Bible"? Because it sounds *roughly* as reliable for facts as any other fiction book.

[CraigD]

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cHAiAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT37&lpg=PT37&dq=jews+budapest+blood+servant+"so+weak"&source=bl&ots=xcFLzbrqlU&sig=W7M69orEDrds0p0MthEZpBbDiOU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=L0cmVb-bC8Pdar3RgfAO&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=jews%20budapest%20blood%20servant%20"so%20weak"&f=false

Is that book "The Evil Bible"? Because it sounds *roughly* as reliable for facts as any other fiction book.

Here’s a description of “The Evil Bible”, from its LuLu.com page

Originally from a website called Joy of Satan, I had copy and pasted most of the site to make the basic Spiritual Satanism version to The Satanic Bible, in this biblical book is a life guide of how to live has a spiritual satanist and what exactly is a "Spiritual Satanist" and what "Spiritual Satanism" is in Reality. I am Joshua Michael Johnson the author of this version to The Satanic Bible and I hope this will shed some light on this Subject and be a very good bible for all Spiritual Satanist to live by. This is the Bible for all Satanist and Demon Worshipers who always wished they had a Bible made especially for them. This book is also the Bible that exposes Christianity for what it really is. The Christians Have their Bible and now the Spiritual Satanist will have theirs after all this time they will have one that actually says "Bible" and is exactly what they are looking for.

Pretty clearly a religious document, not a reliable history.

 

That said, the anecdote about

... a case concerning a girl, in the late 19th Century in Budapest, who was employed as a servant for a man and his group. One evening she was invited to a feast and was put to sleep with a drink. She awoke so weak she could barely walk, and she noticed strange pains in her limbs. On her right upper arm, her left thigh and above her navel were small, blood-red spots, and in the middle of these round spots, was a small opening. She assumed the men sucked out a large amount of her blood and she left the service because of this.

doesn’t seem unreasonable to me, because it states only that a 19th century Hungarian servant believe her employers had sucked a lot of her blood, not that they actually had.

 

It sounds like she lost a huge amount of blood but the way it was described, these were only little wounds. It doesn't sound like any blood was flowing out her wounds when she woke up. Why not? It doesn't sound like they went for her arteries since she didn't mention she had any of these cuts on her neck, inside the elbow, forearm, etc.

Though I agree the described wounds don’t sound like they could have bled a lot, hypodermic needles not much inferior to preset day ones were known to European and American physicians since about 1860, so if some wealthy, unethical Romanian wanted to steal blood from a servant, they could have done so leaving only a small mark, taking blood from any of the major arm or leg veins, or even one of the great veins in the abdomen. In the late 19th century, it was not necessary to make a large incision or use an artery to get a lot of blood.

 

In the 19th Century, hypodermics were rarely used to remove blood, not because they were technically incapable of doing so safely, but because there was little used for extracted human blood, because until about 1907, blood types and effective tests to determine them were unknown, so blood transfusions carried a great risk of causing sudden death.

 

People with medical knowledge, or access to an unethical physician who wanted human blood for non-medical purposes – presumably to drink it – would have been able to get it with little risk to their victims. The story from The Evil Bible could describe such an event.

 

Where she is factual or fictional, the servant was wise to leave her employer. Drugging people and doing things to them without their consent is, now and then, assault.

 

“The History of the Hypodermic Needle” and “History of Blood Transfusion” are a couple of many brief histories of these subjects.