Doctors Begin to Study The Blue Fugates

In the late 1950s, a hematologist named Martin Cawein from the University of Kentucky was fascinated by the stories of the blue Fugate family. In 1960, he decided to move near Troublesome Creek in the hopes to meet one of them some day. Hematologists study blood, so for him, the idea of blue-skinned people was like making a life-changing discovery that could make his name go down in history. Since this family was so secretive, no one knew where they lived. He would drive around to medical clinics and hospitals, asking other medical professionals if they had ever met a blue Fugate. One day, Cawein met a nurse named Ruth Pendergrass, and he heard the story he had been waiting to hear for a long time.

Ruth told the story of a woman who showed up to the doctor’s office, but instead of walking through the front lobby, she knocked on one of the back doors. She acted as if she was trying to hide herself from the public, and asked for a routine blood test. It was very cold outside, and this woman’s face and fingernails were a deep indigo blue. Ruth Pendergrass immediately became concerned for this woman. She was terrified, thinking that her blue skin was an indication that she was going to die of a heart attack. The blue woman quickly explained that she had a skin condition that ran in her family, and urged her not to be concerned. Her last name was Combes, and her maiden name was Fugate.

After locating the Combes family in a town near Troublesome Creek called Ball Creek, Dr. Martin Cawein went more than a little bit crazy over the excitement of finally meeting the blue-skinned people. He trudged through the woods at random until he spotted a blue-skinned person. As soon as he saw them, he began shouting at them to stop, and ran after them. Of course, if you saw a random stranger chasing you in the woods, you would run, too! He did not exactly have a very good plan, but the actual location of these villages in the middle of nowhere was unknown to everyone, except for those who lived there.

Determined to meet another blue person, Dr. Cawein decided it was a better plan to simply stick around town for a while, hoping that eventually, one of the family members would need to go to the doctor again. After all, the blue woman had a good experience with Ruth Pendergrass, so she had gained a reputation of being trustworthy and non-judgemental. One day, he got lucky, because two siblings named Patrick and Rachel Ritchie showed up to see nurse Pendergrass. Dr. Cawein began to run some tests, and asked them a million questions. He determined that they did not have heart or lung disease, and he wanted to map out their family tree.

Patrick and Rachel were visibly uncomfortable and embarrassed by all the personal questions, and they expressed that they did not want to be blue, but that they were born that way. After running some blood tests, he realized that they did not have abnormal hemoglobin, which had been his theory all along. After doing some more research, he found a similar case in Anchorage, Alaska, where a different doctor had found cases of blue-skinned people in some of the indigenous people. They were missing an enzyme, so their blood was not oxygenated properly.

Dr. Cawein ran a blood test which confirmed that the Fugates were also missing the same enzyme. So he created a substance called Methylene Blue, and Patrick and Rachel Ritchie agreed to allow him to inject them with it. The doctor called this an “electron donor”, which carried the oxygen to the blood that they were missing. For the first time in their lives, the siblings began to turn a more normal shade of pink. They were thrilled to finally look normal, but unfortunately, the effects were only temporary. Methylene Blue leaves the body after going to the bathroom. Dr. Cawein gave them tablets that they could take on a daily basis, or whenever they wanted to go out in public without blue skin.