Sara M’s Reviews > Civilization and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan > Status Update

"According to one contemporary article critical of the official explanation for the riots, the idea of blood-taking (or fat-taking or child-taking)circulated among the populace well before the 1873 conscription order, usually in association with Western foreigners who [...] had been believed to "take the lifeblood of children and refine medicines with it, mix the fresh blood of pregnant women and drink it in..."