Blue Bloods

Consumption. Symptoms include a high fever, fainting, dizziness, coughing up of blood, and the accumulation of fluid in the lungs. During the early years of the American colony at Plymouth, a high degree of consumption was the cause of many deaths. "Full consumption" was the term for a person who had died with all of his or her blood drained from the body. Theories suggest that a bacterial infection broke down the platelets, thinning out the blood and absorbing it into the body so that it only looked as though all the blood had disappeared.

— From Death and Life in the Plymouth Colonies, 1620–1641 by Professor Lawrence Winslow Van Alen