The following is my translation of an article called: Das Blut in Glauben und Aberglauben der Menschheit von Gerichtsassessor Dr Albert Hellwig. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1914, Heft 11, Seiten 471-473.
The article includes discussion of a then contemporary accusation of supposed ritualised murder by a Jew in Kiev. This appears to be a reference to the 'Beilis trial' of 1913. Beilis was accused of having murdered and mutilated a 13 year old boy two years earlier, and this fed a storm of antisemitic bile in some of the Russian press. Inconveniently for some, Beilis was found not guilty.
Another theme addressed in the article concerns an incidence of supposed witchcraft in Silesia. While some readers may be surprised to hear of such things happening in early twentieth century Europe, the most recent court conviction for witchcraft in England apparently dates from 1944 (Helen Duncan aka Hellish Nell). That's thirty years more recent than this article.
I'm not aware of any previous translation.
Trevor Dykes.

The blood in the beliefs and superstition of people by Court Assessor Dr Albert Hellwig

The presence of a commandment forbidding the consumption of blood can already be found in the Old Testament, and this has been accounted for as being due to the presence of the soul in the blood. This understanding is found in various forms all round the entire Earth, and it has led to blood being regarded everywhere as a special juice, the consumption of which can result in the transfer of magical powers. As Wilhelm Kundt relates in his Völkerpsychologie ('Psychology of Nations'), the blood of the slaughtered is held to contain their strength and courage, and the blood of sacrificial animals also involves an assumption of the superior powers of animals compared to hose of the human. It is easy to appreciate why it is the blood which is so commonly seen as the centre of the soul as, from an experience that often enough reoccurs within a barbarian culture, those wounded in battles that have blood streaming from their wounds also lose their lives.

From various sources, a quantity of material in recent years has been concerned with the superstitious use of blood -and particularly the use of human blood, for example from Strack, Westermarck and also from Hovorka and Kronfeld. One who wants to make themselves familiar with the many differing forms of blood superstitions would find, in the works just mentioned, countless examples systematically presented in careful accordance with particular scientific criteria (see the literature list at the end of this article.)

My challenge here should not be to present a compressed summary of the various forms of blood superstition, -the amount of available space would hardly suffice- but rather to only provide evidence for a few concrete examples of blood superstition which, even today, have persisted among modern cultural peoples, and have to do especially with beliefs in certain healing and magical powers ascribed to human blood.

It hardly needs to be stated that I do not intend to reanimate old tales such as of ritual murder, as has recently been given a tragic reawakening in Kiev. In order to remove any doubts, it will be stated that the investigations conducted namely by Strack make it untenable, despite the accusation made against Jews by prejudiced parties, that their religious laws require the ritual consumption of human blood, especially that of innocent Christian children, and this is allowed or even demanded on certain occasions. On the contrary, one can conclude that the religious rules concerning consumption of blood, as are found in the Pentateuch and also in rabbinical literature, absolutely contradict such a requirement. What is, however, also decisive is that the most thorough research of all relevant literature cannot reveal a single instance providing any evidence at all for suggestions of ritual murder. Even the many ritual murder processes which, in recent years, have been discussed in full openness and have been made known to us all by impeccable sources, have consistently, when it came to testing the problem of ritual murders, produced secure evidence that guilt for ritual murder has been assumed completely groundlessly. On the other hand, this does not providence evidence that some superstitious Jew could be involved in some form of blood superstition and, due to this superstitious belief, could be involved in committing a punishable crime and especially one of murder. As blood superstitions appear to be a universal phenomenon, and are still found among modern cultural peoples, that would not mean that superstitious Jews could in no case possess such a belief. But it should be expressly intoned that not a single instance is known to us in which even some probability could be shown, that a Jew has committed a murder of this kind for reason and, in particular, that for all the ritual murder processes of recent decades well known to us, none allowed for an assumption of this sort.

Two forms of superstition concerning the use of human blood have remained particularly common, and even among the lower classes of modern cultural peoples today: namely blood drinking by epileptics and, secondly, painted the enchanted person with the blood of a supposed witch.

Firstly, as far as blood drinking by epileptics is concerned, it was already reported by Roman doctors that those susceptible to such cases drank the blood of fallen gladiators in Rome, with the belief that this method would cure them of their illness. During the Middle Ages too, this supposed cure was taken seriously and educated medics represented that the consumption of blood could certainly help epileptics

Even in more recent times, there is a whole series of reported cases from which it can be shown, that this belief has remained alive through the millennia.

When executions were still public, it regularly came to friction between the armed guards protecting the execution place and hungry, hate-filled females who, at any price, wanted to have some of the blood of the executed, partly to use it against epilepsy; and partly from the belief that blood served all sorts of magical purposes. At the execution of a female prisoner in Göttingen in the year of 1859, the mob broke through the formation square of Hanoverian soldiers, and rushed the gallows so as to gain possession of some of the blood of the hanged person. Many people also stormed the execution scaffold of a robber-murderer in Hanau in the year of 1861, and drank from the steaming blood. When the murderer, Hunz, was executed near Tönning, on April 16rh 1844, the epileptic son of a local gentleman drank, with the permission of the executioner who had come from Oldenburg, some of the blood of the poor sinner. As has been stated to me in a series of letters from prison officers, these sorts of cases also occur during the most recent days or, at least, are attempted.

A further case was reported 6 years ago from Upper Silesia. A labouring woman, S., who lived in Lötzen, had long had a nervous illness. One had attempted all manner of means unsuccessfully. A cleaning woman claimed to have discovered the cause of means of a cure. According to her opinion, the ill woman was under the spell of a neighbour, whom she specified. In order to recover, she would have to rub her face with the blood of the witch, and then burn a piece of the witch's dress. The patient agreed to this. An excuse was used to call the supposed witch to the bedside of Frau S., she was held securely by the husband, and the patient scratched her face and tore off part of her dress. No legal complaint was lodged, but the superstitions woman did have to pay the alleged witch with a high amount of damages.

Finally, another case may be cited, that of a scamming 'sympathetic' doctor in Braunschweig, whose case is also known to me from criminal reports, and he had received a great reputation among the superstitious country folk to whom he sold the blood of poor sinners as an effective medicine.

These few examples, which could easily be increased with many more, suffice to show that the modern court official is still confronted with blood superstition, and still has to reckon with crimes caused by it.

As well as both forms of blood superstition cited, I could also add interesting evidence for other subforms of blood superstition from the current time. Namely, various cases are known from Serbia and southern Italy in which superstitious acts of murder took place in order that, with the blood of the victim, cherished treasures could be attained and, not only in Russia and among southern Slavs, but it has also occurred among ourselves in recent years, that when members of a family have died quickly one after another without obvious cause, that the first deceased has been deemed to be a vampire, their grave has been opened by superstitious family members, the head has been separated from the body by a cut with a spade, and the resultant flow of blood has been given to ill family members so as to break the power of the vampire.

However, it would become too involved if we were to address this and other subforms of blood superstition in closer detail. The instances cited suffice to allow it to be recognised, that the universality of a blood superstition in itself is further evidence to show that the human, in its most primitive drives in all areas and during all times, has basically remained the same, and that all the cultural advances across the millennia have not been able to dispel the superstitious imaginings and customs securely rooted within the whole human race. Whoever takes some closer interest in the psychology of superstition will have doubts as to whether it will ever be possible, that the superstitious instinct of humanity can generally be eradicated.

As is also known, before the execution of Grete Beyer, an elderly mother took great trouble to gain permission to obtain some blood from the criminal, in order that she might cure her son of giddiness with it.

Even an act of murder has involved this superstition in recent decades. A Swiss, Bellenot, murdered an old woman in the year of 1861, who had lived pitifully from searching for herbs, the so called Doktorfraueli, and indeed, as he plausibly admitted, the only reason was for the consumption of her blood so as to cure his epilepsy. Articles concerning this case in Bern, which has not yet been presented in detail in the scientific literature, have been sent to me by the Justice Department of the Canton of Bern. From there can be seen that, from some parties, doubts have been voiced about the reliability of the so far single source for this interesting case, but they are not valid.

Should we now turn to the second sort of blood superstition that we wish to consider somewhat more closely, we can also find very many examples for this being available from legal processes.

One namely often believes that one can cure illnesses that can be traced back to magic, but only if one treats the afflicted by painting them with the blood of the witch or warlock, or by getting them to drink the blood of the witch or warlock. The reasoning behind these thoughts is founded upon the idea of breaking the spell of the magician or the witch with whom the case is connected.

This superstition is particularly widespread in eastern Germany. In the year of 1883, a carpenter in the west Prussian village of Schöneck maintained that his ten-year-old daughter, who had already been laid low for three years, was under the spell of a certain Frau M, who had given the girl apples and pears. As a measure against this, it was recommended to tap blood from the witch and give it to the small patient as medicine. Accompanied by a number of friends, the father removed three drops of blood by stabbing the witch with a needle, and these were then given to the child. With a view to their superstition and the not very serious injury, the perpetrator was sentenced to the possibly overly harsh punishment of three days in prison. In another very similar case, the files about which I have read, the accused was sentenced to a fine of 30 marks by the court in Thorn in the year of 1904. That was a mother, the son of whom had suffered from cramp attacks for two years, and these had first begun when a certain Frau B had received the customary Wurststulle at the burial of her son. (Additional note: Wurststulle is apparently a slice of bread with sausage on it, and the connection of such a thing with a burial is doubtlessly a very well known one. Sadly, it's not known to me.) In order to help her son, the accused struck the supposed witch and marked her son with the blood. The court report maintained that the belief in witchcraft causing illnesses, and the sole possibility of a cure being such a mythological method, is most certainly still current.

References
Hellwig: Ein Fall von Körperverletzung infolge Hexenglaubens, Monatsschrift für Kriminalpsychologie, Bd. 3, S.219 ff.
Hellwig: Ritualmord und Blutauberglaube (Minden, 1914).
Hellwig: Verbrechen und Aberglaube (Leipzig, 1908), S.70.
v. Hovorkau & Kronfeld: Vergleichende Volksmedizin (Stuttgart, 1908), Bd. 1. S.79 ff., Bd. 2, S.216 ff.
Nathan: Der Fall Juristschinski, Offizielle Dokumente und private Gutachten (Berlin, 1913).
Strack: Das Blut im Glauben und Aberglauben der Menschheit (5. Aufl., München, 1900).
Westmarck: Ursprung und Entwicklung der Moralbegriffe, Bd. 2 (Leipzig, 1909), S.448 ff.