Philly’s Mütter Museum bares its fangs with a vampire makeover

I want to operate, but not as you think. Let me tell you now, but not a word to another. I want to cut off her head and take out her heart. — Dracula, Bram Stoker

Vampires are a problem, if you have them.

They don’t stay dead, obviously a big issue. But that’s not all. They can come for you.

In Dracula, Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, some of which was likely written at what is now the Bellevue Stratford Hotel on South Broad Street, the undead infect whatever environment they inhabit, like a virus or insidious bacteria.

For the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia on South 22nd Street, the disease analogy is particularly apt. So it should come as no surprise that the Mütter is marking the occasion of the 125th anniversary of publication of the novel by proclaiming 2022 the Year of Dracula, mounting a small exhibition and offering numerous programs, several in concert with the Rosenbach Museum, located in the 2000 block of Delancey Place.

The Rosenbach is the repository of 100 or so pages of notes Stoker made for his novel, and is presenting a series of vampiresque programs itself, not the least of which is the “Dracuthon,” a marathon reading of the novel from dusk to dawn (naturally), 4 p.m. to 9 a.m., Oct. 14-15, at the Trinity Center for Urban Life, 2212 Spruce St.

Among the 100 pages of notes, the Rosenbach has the Stratford Hotel portions — notes on hotel stationary for chapters 26 and 27 of the book.

Edward G. Pettit, senior manager of public programs at the Rosenbach, noted that Stoker was the manager for the Lyceum Theatre in London’s West End, and “pretty much” managed the life of the Lyceum’s star performer, Henry Irving, “the biggest, the most popular actor” in England at the time.

“When the company would go on tour, and they came to America a couple times, Philadelphia is one of the places they stopped and that’s the hotel where he stayed,” said Pettit.

In addition to the Dracuthon, Pettit said the Rosenbach would be offering a course in collaboration with the Mütter.

The Mütter’s exhibition opens Oct. 6.

At the center of the exhibit in a display resembling a coffin will be a bright red heart, a “vermillion heart” once used by medical students.

The heart is now still and bloodless.

Within the coffin near the heart will be autopsy tools — saws, scalpels, scrapers, forceps, scissors, and the like.

There will also be a highly unusual vampire-killing kit, borrowed from the Mercer Museum. It contains a pistol, silver-colored bullets (actually made of pewter), crucifixes, a white stake with an ivory cross on it, an unidentified vial of fluid or “serum,” and a very old head of garlic.

Many of the materials in the kit date from the 19th century, but some objects are of more recent vintage, casting doubt on the kit’s authenticity.

“But we wanted to borrow it and show it anyway because it’s such a testament to how this kind of mythos lives on in the popular imagination,” said Meredith Sellers, a program coordinator with the College of Physicians.

An ever-present fatal disease, in those days incurable, serves to invigorate the cultural imagination.

Tuberculosis, caused by bacterial infection, was prevalent throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, when it was known as consumption or the “wasting disease.” There was no cure, leading some to conclude that they were plagued by vampires that were sucking the life’s blood from families and communities.

The great New England Vampire Panic of the 19th century was a reaction, scholars now believe, to periodic deadly outbreaks of tuberculosis. People became convinced vampires infested the landscape, leading family and community members to dig up the recent dead from cemeteries, looking for signs of vampirism.

Not surprisingly many of the signs of vampire activity could “be explained by natural decomposition,” said Sellers.

“Things like disturbances in a coffin, or blood around orifices are often caused by buildups of gas inside the body, which is known as a purge,” she said. “Or other things like the gums recede and lips kind of stiffen in this grimace in people who have recently died.”

The bloat of cadavers and redness around the lips were interpreted as evidence of recent “feeding,” not the normal buildup of gases.

“They would exhume a body and then they would take out major organs like the heart or the liver, and they would look for traces of blood that would hypothetically suggest that this person had just consumed blood and then they would often burn those organs. And feed them to somebody who was, you know, a victim of a vampire, who was usually somebody who was actually suffering from tuberculosis.”

Pennsylvania was not immune from the panic. The most recent case of a vampire-related exhumation occurred in the mountains in the central part of the state — in 1949.

Some of the events planned for the Year of Dracula: