d give it the power of
flowing by degrees through all the channels.

This opinion appears so much the more probable from its being
confirmed by an experiment. If you boil in a glass or earthen vessel
one part of chyle, or milk, mixed with two parts of cream of tartar,
the liquor will turn from white to red, because the tartaric salt will
have rarified and entirely dissolved the most oily part of the milk,
and converted it into a kind of blood. That which is formed in the
vessels of the body is a little redder, but it is not thicker; it is,
then, not impossible that the heat may cause a fermentation which
produces nearly the same effects as this experiment. And this will be
found easier, if we consider that the juices of the flesh and bones
resemble chyle very much, and that the fat and marrow are the most
oily parts of the chyle. Now all these particles in fermenting must,
by the rule of the experiment, be changed into a kind of blood. Thus,
besides that which has been discoagulated and melted, the pretended
vampires shed also that blood which must be formed from the melting of
the fat and marrow.

CHAPTER XIII.

NARRATION EXTRACTED FROM THE "MERCURE GALENT" OF 1693 AND 1694,
CONCERNING GHOSTS.

The public memorials of the years 1693 and 1694 speak of _oupires_,
vampires or ghosts, which are seen in Poland, and above all in Russia.
They make their appearance from noon to midnight, and come and suck the
blood of living men or animals in such abundance that sometimes it flows
from them at the nose, and principally at the ears, and sometimes the
corpse swims in its own blood oozed out in its coffin.[472] It is said
that the vampire has a sort of hunger, which makes him eat the linen
which envelops him. This reviving being, or _oupire_, comes out of his
grave, or a demon in his likeness, goes by night to embrace and hug
violently his near relations or his friends, and sucks their blood so
much as to weaken and attenuate them, and at last cause their death.
This persecution does not stop at one single person; it extends to the
last person of the family, if the course be not interrupted by cutting
off the head or opening the heart of the ghost, whose corpse is found in
his coffin, yielding, flexible, swollen, and rubicund, although he may
have been dead some time. There proceeds from his body a great quantity
of blood, which some mix up with flour to make bread of; and that bread
eaten in ordinary protects them f