Bleu Cheese, Bluegrass, and Blue People; Kentucky's got it all.
- undergroundresearc
- Jun 3, 2022
- 2 min read
In an example of reality being stranger than fiction, we have the Blue People of Kentucky, a family known as the Fugates. In the 1820s, a French orphan named Martin Fugate settled down in Kentucky with his wife Elizabeth. However, Martin and Elizabeth were both carriers for (and Martin expressed) a rare disorder called Methemoglobinemia, which caused their skin to turn blue.
Methemoglobinemia is a condition that affects the oxygen levels in the hemoglobin, changing the color of the person's skin, blood, and lips, giving them a mostly blueish tint and brown blood. It can create health issues depending on how bad someone has the condition. (1)
Of course, at the time the Fugates lived, we didn't know that. All they knew was that when they had their 7 children, 4 of them were born blue. Because of this, they did face discrimination from locals, which is pretty on brand for mid-to-late 1800s Kentucky. Due to the rural location and their difference in skin tone, the Fugate family didn't exactly have the pick of any life partners in the area. Hence, most of their descendants were inbred.
With rare disorders such as this, inbreeding is usually the cause of it, as it's nearly impossible for the disorder to be expressed when someone's parents aren't related (Martin and Elizabeth just got quite unlucky in that he expressed the disorder, and she carried it). The number of people in the community that expressed Methemoglobinemia grew with time, and their story started to get out.
Interestingly enough, this disorder didn't really present any issues in their lives. Besides the discrimination, of course, and the fact that they lived in Kentucky. But healthwise, the Fugates were alright.
Soon, a Dr. Madison Cawein heard about the Blue people and was curious about them. He traveled to Kentucky and met with two of the Fugates' descendants to do some tests to try and figure out what was causing the blue color. Reportedly the two people who he met with, Patrick and Rachel Ritchie, were uncomfortable with the fact that they were blue and wouldn't even go into the waiting room.
He discovered that it was a lack of the diaphorase enzyme that was causing the Methemoglobinemia. Once the cause of the disorder could be determined, a cure was administered. Oddly enough, giving Patrick and Rachel a shot of methylene blue (a blue dye that's also used in medicine) returned their skin to what would be considered their normal color. Of course, if the person's lived their entire life with blue skin, does that not become normal?
This wasn't a permanent solution, and they ended up having to take these methylene blue tablets every day in order to not return to a blue color. With the world becoming a bigger place (and no longer being Blue) the Fuagtes and descendants scattered, no longer reproducing within the family, and slowly the disorder died out again. (2)
(1) Ludlow JT, Wilkerson RG, Nappe TM. Methemoglobinemia. Publishing; 2022 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK537317/
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