The villagers undertaking their vampire-destroying procedures were so convinced that the corpse they were mutilating was indeed a vampire that the inevitably ghastly aspects of what they were doing were borne with. It is possible that strong herbal decoctions, garlic, or the Four Thieves’ Vinegar (a concoction of vinegar and garlic which supposedly protected its users from catching the plague) were used in an attempt to mask the smell as the villagers thrust a wooden stake into the corpse, thus releasing the putrefying gases in a horrific stench that must have caused many in close proximity to faint. (However, the truth is that prior to Bram Stoker’s reference to garlic as a vampire repellent in his novel Dracula, there is nothing in Slavic folklore which suggests its use against vampires.) Rotting blood and foetid matter would have been emitted in a terrifying and foul discharge. It was believed that those upon whom the blood and bodily fluids of a vampire were splattered would sicken and die, so care was taken to put a sheet over the body before piercing it.
Of course, it would have been most effective for the body to be burned entirely – but it is much harder to burn a human body than it might seem, particularly with the body’s high water content. A temperature of about 1600º Fahrenheit (871º Celsius) would be required for at least 45 minutes in order to reduce the body to ash. Contortions of the arms and contractions of the limbs may occur as a result of congealing protein in the muscle cells. To make the gruesome task easier, the local executioner might chop up the body into small enough pieces to burn separately – a task that took all day. The following story quoted by Montague Summers illustrates the difficulty: “His body, when it was brought to the fire, proved as unwilling to be burnt, as before to be drawn; so that the Executioner was fain with hooks to pull him out, and cut him into pieces to make him burn. Which, while he did, the blood was found so pure and spiritous, that it spurted into his face as he cut him: but at last, not without the expense of two hundred and fifteen great billets, all was turned into ashes. Which they carefully sweeping up together… and casting them into the River…”42
Bizarrely, some doctors prescribed the ashes of a vampire’s heart as a sure-fire cure for one who was being or had been attacked by a vampire. Mixed in with other ingredients, the patient was supposed to swallow this morbid potion in the hope of recovery.
It hardly seems necessary to say that the patients died rather than recovered…