Gladiators of Ancient Rome made blood sacrifices before the fights to the gods that granted them strength and resilience. That’s why people believed that the blood of the warriors had miraculous effects.

Famous Pliny the Elder wrote about this: “Epileptic patients are in the habit of drinking the blood even of gladiators, draughts teeming with life. And yet these persons, consider it a most effectual cure for their disease, to quaff the warm, breathing, blood from the man himself.”