Vampire Clinic, Part 1

Vampire legends are a global phenomenon, and the trope of the blood-sucking humanoid shows no signs of vanishing from human traditions. But can we trace its origins back to any specific diseases and medical symptoms? In this blood-stained episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick haul up the vampire’s casket and look for signs of rabies, syphilis, dermatitis, tuberculosis and more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And of course, since it's October, we're still in our
month long celebration of monster science, horror science, spooky science

(00:25):
all month long, and today we're bringing you another entry.
This time we're gonna be taking a visit to the
vampire clinic. That's right. We have all of these various
vampire patients coming in, uh, family members bringing them in
and uh, you know, straight jackets, caskets, what have you,
all of them with a seemingly insatiable appetite for blood.

(00:48):
But how how are the doctors here supposed to treat
these various vampires because there's not simply one vampire, right,
I mean, all we have to do is look around
at the at the wealth of of of global folklore
and legend to see that there are multiple varieties of
vampire out there. How are we to figure out exactly
what ailment might be causing any given one of them? Right?

(01:10):
You know? I I think despite the fact that sometimes
when you hear people complain about the vampire movies of today.
They will specifically complain about the lack of consistency and
the rules that the vampire must adhere to in order
to survive or be defeated or whatever, you know what
I'm talking about. Like they're saying there needs to be
more consistency, Like people complain like what this movie had

(01:33):
a vampire that like, yeah, what this vampire didn't respond
to across or oh what you know what I mean?
But I feel exactly the opposite. I I do not
think there should be more consistency in what supernatural rules
apply to vampires in the movies. I think there should
be less consistency and more variety to reflect the fact

(01:53):
that the vampire, long before it emerged as a sort
of twentieth century movie monster with with well established tropes
and cliches that you can repeat in every single monster
movie down the road, it was, it was a folk
almost at folk hero, certainly not a fulk hero of
folk monster, a monster of the people of the folk

(02:15):
lore you know, spread from house to house, from town
to town, beliefs about the dead coming back to life,
beliefs about how they drain the vitality of the living.
There are a few things that are consistent, but other
than that, there's a lot of variety. And I think
one of the reasons we see a lot of variety
in vampire folklore is the close association with vampires and

(02:37):
real historical biological diseases, which of course there is plenty
of variety in as well. Yeah, I mean globally you
look at them and they range from spectral forces to
physical blood drinkers, from humanoid monsters to things best described
as great flesh bags or or chimerical hybrids that have
you know, involved beast parts. Right. Uh, And you know,

(02:59):
we obviously love vampires on the show We're very We're
a pro vampire podcast. I think we're we're recovering to
the vampire position, right. Vampires got a little stale for
a while there in the movies. Well, I think the
things that get stale are first of all, a tendency
to only adhere to very certain aspects of the vampire
trope and not and this, and not realizing they have

(03:21):
this rich heritage that you need to you you could
be drawing from, Like how many vampire movies utilize their
fascination with with knots and uh and and chords. You
know where they have some sort of intricate pattern that
keeps them occupied until the sun comes up. How many?
How many use the throw rice on the ground or
seeds on the ground so they have to stop and

(03:42):
count them. Yeah, that sort of thing. Um or or
the idea which we will touch on later, the the
idea that you could become a vampire simply by being
a magnificent lover. That's almost never explored as a vampire origin.
I don't think I know that one. Yeah, like that,
that's one that's sited in one of the papers we
look at. If you're just a fabulous lover, you might
turn into a vampire. I want to see that in

(04:03):
the film. Yeah, it should, well, I mean it should
show up because there should be more variety, like I'm saying,
in the vampire movies. I think we're on the same
page about this. And then the other thing too is
we can't always blame it on the vampire. Sometimes it's
just a poor movie or poor script or performance. Is
there any other man? The many factors that can hurt
a vampire film. But no matter what, the baseline principle

(04:28):
behind the vampire continues to resonate that you have this
sort of human but ultimately an human thing that wants
to drain our life force. And there are any number
of cultural and psychological angles to take on all of this, right,
I mean, the racial treatment of the vampire legend, the
the emotional aspects of vampireism. Sexual issues with vamporism are

(04:52):
long for immortality, but there's almost always this this element
of contagion, right, some physical change uh, in physiological other
news that can be acquired, and that's what we're going
to be focusing on today, the element of contagion, of disease,
of physiological change. We want to explore the medical side

(05:12):
of the vampire legend, uh, and this is a territory
that's extremely rich. So there's no way we're gonna have
time today to explore all of the fascinating ways that
you can look at vampire legends from from a medical standpoint,
where we're going to explore some of the most interesting
ones right now, there's a lot of fascinating ground to
cover on the subject in the link between uh, medical

(05:34):
conditions and diseases and the vampire lore. So this is
going to be part one of a two part episode.
We hope you'll stick around for both of them. And
if some of you out there are are listening to
this and you're saying, well, Robert and Joe, I'm not
really a vampire fan. I'm more of a werewolf fan. Well,
the good news is that there's a little bit of
werewolf in here too. A lot of the things that
we're discussing here you could potentially apply to myths of werewolf,

(05:57):
any kind of myth where people are taking on some
sort of you know, physiological otherness. Yes. And another thing
I would say is that the vampire lore and the
werewolf lore are not quite so distinct in their origins
as they have become in the movies of today. Uh So,
obviously we're not going to be assuming today that vampires

(06:17):
are real, but we can ask what goes to explain
the origins of vampire folklore. And of course, as always, Robert,
you and I are fond of emphasizing that sometimes in
seeking the inspiration behind mythical beasts and monsters and that
kind of thing, we sometimes underplay the potential role of
creative imagination. Right, Sometimes writers and storytellers just use their

(06:40):
imagination and make things up, And sometimes these made up
stories become very popular and spread far and wide, but
also sometimes mythical beasts and stories are indeed inspired by
aspects of reality, of nature, of human history being misinterpreted
as supernatural. And so we're gonna look at how that
last part applies to the idea of vampires. Could vampires

(07:02):
be an example of something in nature being misinterpreted, not
simply a product of creative imagination, but based in a
misunderstanding of real biology and nature at work, interpreted through
the superstitious lenses of human culture. And of course, as
we we've we've hinted at an obvious place to look
for this kind of inspiration for vampire lore would be

(07:23):
in human diseases. It turns out lots of human diseases
over the years have been linked to vampireism, so many
that we can't talk about all of them. But today
we we we want to take a quick tour through
the medical view of vampireism. So let's settle into the
vampire clinic. Robert, you started to paint a picture of
this earlier. Yeah, we imagine we're in a wing of

(07:44):
Dark Place Hospital and uh, and Dr Lucian Sanchez is
waiting to see the next patient who comes in at
the vampire clinic. So we got a waiting room full
of people who have brought their loved ones suspecting they
may be vampires, they may be becoming vampires, they may
be at risk of becoming vampires. And they've all got
to see Dr Sanchez and say, tell me what's going on? Doc?

(08:07):
Can you help my vampire uncle? Yeah? And the confusing
thing is that these different vampire patients, they do have
at times drastically different characteristics. Some are are pale and
frothing blood uh summer uh summer, or violent. Some are
more carnal in their their desires, you know. Some are
creeping along like like Count Orlock from nos Ferato. Others

(08:30):
are are just waltzing in, glittering like the vampires from Twilight.
Surely these are all different ailments. They most surely are. Now.
I think one patient that we can get out of
the way fairly quickly, not because it's not interesting, but
because it's kind of a different direction than we want
to go in today is the patient who presents to
Dr Lucien Sanchez with clinical vamporism. This would be a

(08:55):
term that is not so much a disease of the body,
but this would be a mental disorder that tends to
entail aspects of necrophilia, of cannibalism, of sadism, of necrophagia,
and fascination with blood. This is when you get, for example,
people who are actually drinking blood, not because they are
supernatural vampires, but because they have an unfortunate mental disorder

(09:19):
right that may or may not be um influenced by
existing vampire fiction, kind of giving them something to feed
on with their delusions. Now, putting that aside, the first
patient that I think we should see in the clinic
today is one that you've visited before on this podcast, Robert,
which is the vampire who in fact is experiencing an

(09:39):
infection of syphilis. Yes, and indeed, Julie Douglas and I
discussed this at length in two episodes that we did
on syphilis, and we recently relaunched these episodes as a
single vault episode of stuff to blow your mind. So
if you want the full deep dive on that, you
should probably go back to the syphilis episodes, right, But
but I'm gonna I'm gonna try and condense it here

(10:00):
and give you, like just the the vampire syphilis cell
on the whole thing. So First of all, I just
need to run through what is syphilis. Many of you
may not know, uh, you should know because it is.
It is still around and it has been a highly
influential um uh disease on human history. Yeah, you might

(10:21):
say it is a major player in the cast of biohistory. Yeah,
definitely so. Syphilis is a chronic, sexually transmitted disease caused
by the spiral keep bacterium Treponema palladum palatum or T. Palatum.
The illness spread through Europe from the mid fifteenth century onward,
and despite the twentieth century advancement of antibiotics, which is

(10:43):
really the you know, the silver bullet that that that
took out a lot of the threat posed by syphilis. Regardless,
syphilis remains a global health concern, especially when you when
you consider that more than a million pregnant women pass
syphilis onto unborn children each year. According to the World
Health Organization, this forum, known as congenital syphilis, causes severe,

(11:05):
disabling and lethal health complications for the developing fetus. Now,
in non congenital cases, the primary infection of syphilis occurs
when T. Palatum enters the body, leaving a sore or
sores at the side of transmission for three to six weeks.
Then a secondary infection pops up in the weeks following
the primary infection. At this point, the initial te paatum

(11:28):
invasion is over, and now the enemy moves through the host.
A rash spreads across the entire body, accompanying accompanied by
various symptoms such as fever, lethargy, headaches, aches, and hair loss.
At this point, the host will enter a latent or
or hidden stage of the disease, and the T. Palatum
invasion is still present the body, but it's just no

(11:50):
longer contagious. You can think how that kind of hidden section,
or any any disease that has a latency period like that,
that makes it harder to discern exactly where the symptoms
you're experiencing are coming from or what caused them. Those
can help contribute to supernatural interpretations exactly. And it also
makes it all the more dangerous, right because you you

(12:13):
you get sick and then it seems like you get better,
but it's not the case. You still are carrying um
uh T palatum inside your body. Uh. And also I
should point out as far as symptoms go, syphialus was
often referred to as the Great Imitator because it would
it would the symptoms were not necessarily just you know ABC. Uh.

(12:33):
In a way, it kind of ties in nicely with
what we're discussing, uh in regards to the vampire myth.
So it became difficult to to diagnose at times. I mean,
how many diseases have flu like symptoms exactly, these diseases
that are easy to mistake for each other. Now there's
another step to all of this that goes into decidedly
more monstrous territory. Finally, and roughly fifteen to thirty of

(12:55):
those infected, the syphilis enters its late stage, also known
as the tertiary stay age, and it occurs ten to
twenty years after the initial infection, and the cavalcade of
symptoms include tissue damage, muscle damage, oregon damage, coordination problems, paralysis, numbness,
gradual blindness, dementia, and death. Um. This is where you

(13:18):
really get into the period where syphilis, um, you know,
has just this disastrous debilitating effects on say, facial features.
I've often mentioned on the show before. If anyone wants
to just a fabulous bit of medical history UH television,
they should watch The Nick, which was the Soderberg television series,
went to two seasons. Clive Owens, Yeah, Clive Owens plays

(13:42):
Dr Thackeray, Uh, you know, cutting edge of physician of
the of the time. But this is and and there's
a whole plot line in it where he's treating um
an individual with syphilis, and this is uh, this is
pre antibiotics. So there's only so much you can do.
But it's a very well done examination of syphilis in
that show. So, according to Slavic and comparative literature professor

(14:07):
Thomas Longanovic, commentators have often drawn a line of comparison
between the vampire uh and hereditary syphilis, especially hereditary again
being that that has passed from a mother to a child.
Because this it twists and decimates the features uh it uh,
and it can result in sharp, pointy teeth also known

(14:28):
as Hutchinson's teeth, long nails, and elongated skulls and so superficially,
it's easy to look at extreme cases of late syphilis
and compare them to something like count like Count Orlock
from the film Nosferato. Oh yeah, now the nose Ferrato
tradition especially this comes through in in later versions of
the Lord. It might not be there quite so much

(14:49):
in earlier versions, but like in Werner Hertzog's adaptation of No.
S Farrato, there's a clear link between the vampire and disease.
Maybe not so much explicitly syphilis, but like in in
Hertzog's Nos f a To, the vampire brings plague rats
with him where he goes. Yeah, he arrives on a
ship too. I mean the way a number of contagions

(15:10):
suddenly spread their way through an ever widening world. Uh.
And it's also been pointed out that while we uh
we we don't know the exact cause of brom Stoker's
death in nine uh, some biographers do attribute his death
to possibly being tertiary syphilis. So there is this idea
that perhaps, um, perhaps this is a this is a

(15:33):
big elf here, the vampire story that is presented in
popularized through Dracula has a direct link to the experience
of syphilis. Oh. You can almost imagine a kind of
cronenbergie in take on that on the composition of the
story with that in mind. Now, if I were to
present though a clear case, I mean, there are a
number of cases I think of of cinematic vampires and

(15:56):
TV vampires that match up with this. So we've already
mentioned or Lock. I think you could also throw in
any version of a vampire where at first they're beautiful
and then like a hideous nature's revealed. I'm thinking of
Samahiak and from Dusk Till Dawn. But the best example
it's clearly Count spiral Keet himself, which was from a

(16:17):
a U. S. Military um educational animated film about the
dangers of syphilis. What I didn't know about this? Oh yeah,
I recommend everyone check it out. If you just go
to YouTube and you do a search for Count spiral
Keet or just Count Syphilis, I guess it'll probably come
up for that as well. It's just this, uh, this wonderful,

(16:39):
weird educational film about the dangers of syphilis. Oh. I
just looked it up. I'm seeing okay. It's got a
kind of like pink panther kind of animation style. Also
looks like it might have some uh some somewhat sexist imagery,
like casting the female form as like a like a
target of disease delivery. Yeah, you see this a lot.
I mean I don't want to go down the syphilis

(17:01):
wormhole too much here, but um, you see that a
lot too, and messaging of the of of the the
early twentieth century, especially where they're they're warning men about
the dangers of syphilis and in doing so, they're warning
them about the dangers of females and they're portraying females.
Is this kind of monstrous creature ultimately like a hidden

(17:22):
monstrous nature. Now, of course, one has to take into
account of the primary target of these messages. We're you know,
we're talking about men that are in the military at
the listed men, listed men. But uh, but at the
same time, it is kind of creepy and and clearly
there's this strain of misogyny to the messages. It's almost
the same way that you couldn't just warn children about

(17:43):
the dangers of drowning in the pool and the old
moral pit. You had to make up a monster that
lived there and would pull them in. Yeah, it's like
you can't just warn people about the dangers of unprotected
sexual intercourse. You have to like sort of make the
person that they might be having X with into a
monster of some kind. Yeah. Indeed, though thought at the

(18:04):
heart that we we do have to drive home. So syphilis, yes, uh,
contagious and can do very debilitating things to your body
and also your mind. But for the most part that look,
there's not this link of of syphilis making anybody want
to drink blood or anything like that. No, no, no, no,
So it's I think it's a it's a there's a

(18:25):
it lines up in interesting ways with the vampire myth.
But yeah, I don't. I'm certainly not one to say, oh, vampires,
that's syphilis. Okay, So a mixed bag on this one.
A few a few things that say this could have
inspired some vampire lore, possibly especially maybe in the modern age,
but it's not a super strong link. Still, those vampires

(18:46):
that have come to the clinic that that that look
a little or locking in. We'll just give him some
antibiotics and yes, and see if we can't sort that out.
All right, Well, we need to take a quick ad
break and then we will be right back. Alright, we're back. Okay.
Are you ready to look at the next patient at
the Dark Place Vampire clinic. Let's do it. Okay, So

(19:08):
this next one, I think is going to be and
it's going to be kind of a false trail, but
an interesting one raising some good questions about science, communication,
and the media. So I want to start this next
one by looking at a New York Times article from
nineteen five by Philip M. Boffi called rare disease proposed
as cause for vampires. I like how it they used

(19:30):
the word cause. It's not like inspiration, but like cause,
like it made vampires. And I think they're that that
might show up again in some other media that we
should be wary of. So this article is presenting ideas
by someone named Dr David H. Dolphin, who is a
Canadian biochemist at the University of British Columbia, and Dr

(19:52):
Dolphin apparently suggested in a talk at the American Association
of the Advancement of Science or AS that va Empire
and werewolf legends might be rooted in the effects of
porphyria diseases. Now, porphyria diseases, I'll go into more detail
about them in a bit, but they're essentially a malfunction
of the body's ability to manufacture important compounds in the blood.

(20:16):
And this malfunction of the manufacturing of these compounds leads
to a build up of byproducts in the body that
can be harmful about. The article says about one out
of every two hundred thousand people are affected, and Dr
Dolphin gives some reasons. He thinks that porphyria diseases may
have inspired the vampire legends. So, first of all, vampires

(20:36):
obviously hate the sun. Aversion to sunlight, right, Indeed, that's
one of the rules of emperiism that is there is
most commonly portrayed, I would say, especially in the modern age.
Actually maybe less universal in the older folk beliefs. But
he says that porphyria diseases can leave the skin extremely
sensitive to sunlight, to the extent that even mild exposure

(20:57):
to sunlight could cause disfiguring in jury to the skin
and quote caused the nose and fingers to fall off
and make the lips and gums so taught that the teeth,
although no larger than ordinary, look like they are jutting
out in a menacing animal like manner. And at a
time before modern medicine or modern medical understanding, this could

(21:17):
lead someone suffering from porphyria to only leave the house
at night because of the dangers of the sunlight. Quote.
Some victims of the disease also become very hairy, he said,
conceivably one of nature's efforts to protect the skin from
the sun. Uh. And so this makes a link to
the werewolf legend also, of course, but apparently Dr Dolphin

(21:38):
was not the first to suggest porphyria could have contributed
to werewolf legend. He might have been the first to
make the link to vampires. You know, this is also
interesting to think about in terms of sunglasses, which which
you and I have research for an upcoming side project.
I guess you'd say, but without access to modern sunglasses,

(21:58):
what could you do if you had a severe reaction
to sunlight? I mean, you could wear hats and hoods certainly,
but you wouldn't be able to just throw on a
pair of all encompassing um spectacles that will shield your
eyes from the fearsome light of day. Yeah, I don't know.
I wonder if what the sensitivity to light is in

(22:18):
an ocular sense. It's definitely there in the skin, um,
but it could affect the eyes as well. I don't know. Yeah,
I mean you could cover yourself up with just make
sure you're you're fully covered. I mean, you know this
one there there is there that might be regarded as
suspicious as well. As villagers as well. There's because there's
some vampire film that I saw a part of on
TV ages ago. Maybe listeners can chime in if if

(22:42):
you don't know the name of this film. But the
vampires are seeing like walking around in the daylight in
I think Texas somewhere, and they're covering themselves with like
super thick sunblock, like just basically and like like pasty
white face with big sunglasses on. Uh. And it and
it's the near dark. I don't think it's No, it's not.

(23:04):
It's not near dark. They do a little bit of
walking around in the daylight like super bundled up. And
I love near dark to know it. But but this
is something else and I'm suddenly remembering it for the
first time in a while. No, I don't know what
it is right in let us know, Okay. So the
next thing Dr Dolphin says is I think where his theory.

(23:25):
We can explain this more later, but this is where
I think he starts really going off the rails. So
he says a major treatment at the time in porphyria
conditions was the injection of a compound called hem him
is an iron containing compounds, so it's got iron in it.
It's it's part of a class of compounds known as
the porphyrion class, and it's this it makes part of

(23:48):
hemoglobin in the blood and some other important molecules in
the body, but essentially it's important for transporting oxygen to
the body's tissues through the blood. Of course, him is
a constituent of blood found in human blood, so Dolphin says,
pre modern victims of porphyria could conceivably have treated their
own condition by drinking large quantities of the blood of

(24:10):
others which contained the heam they needed. Now, in a
quote given elsewhere and reported by the Associated Press, Dolphins said, quote,
My theory is that in the Middle Ages, if you
couldn't get an injection of heam, which you clearly couldn't,
the next best thing would be to drink a lot
of blood. Now we'll get more into this in a minute,
but immediately when reading that, I had some thoughts. I

(24:31):
was like, wait a second, Now, that would require the
person with the porphyria condition to either have some kind
of instinct or you know, so instinctual knowledge of that
they should drink blood. That seems unlikely, or they would
have to somehow acquire the knowledge that blood drinking could
relieve their symptoms, and how would they learn this? Now,

(24:52):
certainly there's there's something to be said about the about
our appetite and uh, and how we all will find
ourselves sometimes crave the thing that our body needs. Right,
But that's not that would be based on normal evolved
cravings that are that are common to people. Right. Evolution
doesn't select for cravings that are only going to occur

(25:12):
in one out of every two hundred thousand people or something. Right. Yeah,
I'm sure it's making a number of people think of
those scenes in various vampire films where like the hunger
begins to creep in and they don't know what it is,
and so that that the first thing they do is
they start like I'm thinking of Chronos for example, Yeah,
Del Toro Vampire's great one where he sees like somebody's

(25:33):
had a nosebleed on the floor of a bathroom and
he's compelled to lick it off the floor. Well, I
mean that that's great in supernatural vampire movies. I don't
think that makes sense biologically, but we'll we'll come back
to this. Another caveat here, of course, is that Dolphin
did not have direct evidence that the body could acquire
him in the needed way by ingesting it orally. Another

(25:54):
question I'd have is, okay, even if you accept this,
that that they would get him from blood drinking blood,
why the blood of humans and not animals. Yeah, it's
so much easier to acquire uh and just go to
the butcher shopping. It's some animal, Beloyeah, you don't have
to worry about being, you know, anybody dragging you through
the streets and executecuting you in the town square. I mean,

(26:17):
unless it's a really beloved animal. Obviously. Another part of
dolphins hypothesis is okay, so, how did the bite of
a porphyria vampire turn somebody else into a vampire? Well,
it didn't, but it might have seemed to. Dolphin quote
suggested that brothers and sisters could have shared the defective
gene that causes the diseases the porphyria diseases, but that

(26:40):
only one of them might have experienced symptoms of the disease.
If that victim then bit a sibling to get blood,
the shock of the experience might have triggered an attack
of the disease in the bitten sibling. Thus producing another vampire.
But this was the Middle Ages, so you would imagine
that like just every day would be kind of shocking,
or nothing would be shocking because he was so numb

(27:02):
to it. Now, I don't I'm gonna present several reasons
for not agreeing with this hypothesis, but I will say
at least in favor of that when vampiresm does seem
to be a thing that in the folklore is very
often passed from one family member to another. Right, It's
not so much like you know, the vampire goes out
to the stuff you see in the movies today where

(27:24):
they go out to the nightclub or something and they
bite a victim. Vamporism in the folks since very often
was like you had one sibling in the family die
and then it was assumed that that sibling would come
back from the dead as a vampire to get other
members of the family or other members from the community. Finally,
aversion to garlic. Dolphins says why the fear of garlic, Well,

(27:46):
he claims garlic contains a chemical that makes symptoms of
porphyria diseases worse than He doesn't say what that chemical is. Then,
the mere fact that he's bringing in the garlic and
does make it sound like he's really going for an
all inclusive um model for vampireism here, which which I
I love that kind of thing. Like certainly I can
think to a number of vampire movies or books where

(28:10):
they really try and roll out a nice science explanation
for what's happening. Um, I think of Peter Watts. Peter Watts, Yeah,
and when it rolls out his space vampire in that
or I'm also thinking of I am legend. He always
had a pretty robust kind of science the explanation for
what's going on. Yeah, that can be a lot of fun.

(28:30):
I think Peter Watts is my favorite, uh sci fi
ing of a supernatural legend I've ever encountered. Like the
way he turns vampires into a biological creature is super
interesting and the book there is blind site if anyone
wants to check that out in greater detail. But this
is not a sci fi novel, no. Uh So after

(28:51):
this for a while, this seemed to really catch on
in the media, this idea that porphyria diseases could be
the cause of vampire legends, or as some headlines would say,
created vampires like porphyria made people into vampires, and a
lot of experts hit back really hard against this hypothesis

(29:11):
and against the association characterizing the whole porphyria vampire thing
has stupid, evidentially unjustified, and even harmful to people with porphyria. Um.
So just a little bit more on porphyria diseases in general.
First of all, there is more than one kind of
porphyria condition. Porphyria's can be inherited or acquired, but most
are inherited and they're classed in different categories according to

(29:34):
their symptoms. So there are acute or neurological porphyrias which
attack the nervous system, and then there are cutaneous or
dermatological porphyrias which attack primarily the skin. And in general,
porphyria diseases constitute a malfunction of the process creating hemoglobin,
which is this protein in red blood cells that carries

(29:55):
and delivers oxygen to tissues within the body. An important
part of hemo globin is, as I mentioned earlier, the
iron containing compound heam, and now the human body manufactures
the heam it needs in bone, marrow and in the
liver through this complex multi step process. Involving eight different
key enzymes, and as this process moves along the body,

(30:18):
the body creates these intermediate compounds known as HEM precursors,
which eventually, in the end of the process become heame.
But if there is a problem with the production process,
something gets jammed up along the chemical assembly line. There say,
if one of the eight key enzymes is deficient, you
don't have enough of it to make the heam you need.

(30:39):
The body can end up failing to make HEM, and
instead it will be stuck with excess unfinished precursors, sort
of useless porphyrions that can be harmful in excess in
the body. Imagine a you know, there's a there's a
car assembly line, and it can't make the car every time. Instead,
you end up with these half assembled cars, cramming up

(31:00):
the warehouse and getting in the way. I will say,
no matter what, UM, I just want to I want
to hear vampire dialogue talking about HEM. I want to
hear it as the sling for blood, where they're talking
about gotta get that heme, need to give me some
of that heme, where's the hem at? I bet somebody
has done that. I hope so. But anyway, So what
happens in in the porphyria conditions is that there's a

(31:21):
build up of these porphyrions in the blood, the liver,
other tissues, and this can result in the symptoms of porphyrias.
Now there, as I mentioned, there was some serious expert
pushback against the dolphin hypothesis. One very succinct, good, short
little paper I wanted to quote on this um is
called Porphyria and vampiresm Another myth in the making by

(31:43):
An M. Cox from the Postgraduate Medical Journal uh and
so Cox talks about how in the eighteenth century in
Eastern Europe and a lot of a lot of the
vampire legend, we talk about the folkloric vampire stuff, a
lot of it is like eighteenth nineteen century Eastern Europe,
that that is like ground zero for vampire belief right.

(32:05):
And and it's definitely this is the time period in
the particular strains of the folklore that have had the
greatest influence on Western and ultimately global ideas of the vampire.
Not to discount some of the the excellent strains of
the Eastern vampire that have made their way into say
Hong Kong cinema and the Japanese cinema. Yeah, like the

(32:26):
hopping vampires of China and stuff. Sadly, I don't think
any of our discussions today look for like hopping as
a symptom that we're gonna have to We're gonna have
to come back to that future installment of Vampire Clinic. Well,
those are great vampires, but yeah, so I think we're
talking more about the versions that are inspired by these
sort of diseased Eastern European vampires. Where As she says,

(32:48):
the belief in vampires was absolutely rampant. She says, quote
so prevalent was the belief in the existence of a
literal vampire. That the Austrians are occupying Serbia in the
seventeen thirties dispatched a team of medical officers to a
Serbian town to investigate the weekly exhumations and killing of
the dead weekly. So basically just bands of just obsessed

(33:12):
um Europeans going around just digging up the graves, searching
for evidence of that vampire and then pulverizing the corps
as necessary. I remember there being one account, um, and
I'm sorry I don't have citation for this, uh, but
I remember reading this one alleged treatment of the vampire
case where they dug up the grave of a of

(33:33):
a body of a suspected vampire and they made the
body into paste, which everyone then ate on crackers. Wow,
I've never heard that one. Yeah, I have to look
that one up again and see if there's a to
what degree there's any validity to that. You know. That's
the thing about so many of these these folk tales
and uh and uh alleged vampire traditions. Well, I think

(33:53):
about a very common thing is of course decapitating the corps,
separating the head from the body. There's earning involved, burning
parts of the body, burning the whole body. Uh, there's
things you can do to the bones. There's a running
an iron rod through it, there's putting a steak in it.
That one of the ones I really think of the
just sticks in my mind is I believe it's I'm

(34:16):
sorry if I'm wrong about this. I believe it was
from Venice where they found a body with a brick
shoved and it's that one. But anyway back to this paper,
so so Cox says, at the time of her writing,
the idea of vamporism being inspired by Porphyria, had become
deeply embedded in popular consciousness, like this idea had really
caught on. And she traces this idea back to this

(34:37):
nineteen New York Times article and Dr Dolphin, Uh with
the one that I was just talking about. And so
Cox examines the idea what what if porphyria did inspire vamporism?
She says, the main type of porphyria disease that could
be applied to the situation is congenital erythropoietic porphyria, and
she lists some facts about this type of porphyria. One

(34:59):
is that at the time time of this publication, it
was so rare that only about two hundred cases had
ever been diagnosed. It's inherited, It first manifests in early childhood,
and it leaves carriers with extreme sensitivity to the sun,
so much that the skin can blister on exposure to
sunlight and uh. And so this is the part where

(35:19):
where dolphins hypothesis had some validity to it. There's the
idea that that exposure to the sun could be extremely
injurious and uh. And also people suffering from this disease
can benefit from blood transfusions. UH. So here was dolphins
points sensitive to sunlight and they need blood. But then
there are some major problems with this picture of the

(35:40):
porphyry of vampire number one. Cox actually says sensitivity to
sunlight is not a universal part of traditional folk vampire beliefs.
It shows up sometimes, but she cites how in nineteenth
century Europe there are all these reported sightings of vampires
in the daytime. Furthermore, and this is maybe the most
important part, people with the throw poetic porphyria do not

(36:02):
cray of blood and cannot benefit from drinking it, uh coxwrites,
quote the enzyme hamatan necessary to alleviate the symptoms is
not absorbed intact on oral ingestion, and drinking blood would
have no beneficial effect for the sufferer. So, like other
than sensitivity to to sunlight, the biggest part of dolphins

(36:23):
hypothesis is that what they would maybe need to drink
blood in order to treat their symptoms, but that wouldn't work. Now,
it sounds like they would need to inject the blood,
which a they probably they almost certainly did not have
the equipment to do, and it wouldn't know to do,
and they wouldn't know to do, and but then also
would be extremely disastrous to even attempt without knowledge of

(36:46):
of blood types. Yeah, and and sterilization. So yeah, I
mean it's crazy. Uh. But also, she says, the fact
that vampire reports and beliefs were absolutely rampant in say,
eighteenth century Eastern Europe. She can is that example, you know,
they're all over the place. It's inconsistent with how erythropoietic
porphyria is an extremely rare version of an already rare

(37:09):
congenital disease. Right, and it certainly this is a case
where you're you're inclined to say it looked dolphin, pull
back a little on it. And and because I could
conceivably see, you know, it's like, okay, it's super rare.
One person had it once, and then it was popularized
and it became part of a general moral panic. Why,

(37:30):
you know, a widespread panic regarding the possibility of vampiresm
But yeah, when you start really digging in your heels
and saying this is the model, this is the explanation,
this is patient zero for vampireism. Uh, then you start
getting into trouble. I think, Yeah, I agree. She mentions how,
despite all of this stuff that she's just explained, the

(37:51):
Learning Channel recently ran a program on vampires featuring Dr
Dolphin and pumping the porphyria hypothesis. Wait, wait, what's the
learning channel? The learning channel? It's channel on TV. Oh yeah, no, no,
but I think some of our listeners might not be
aware that this is what TLC used to be, the
Learning Channel. There was a time when TLC stood for something,
and it was the Learning Channel. What does it stand

(38:12):
for now? Nothing? It's just letters. It's like KFC. I no, no,
that does not have anything to do with the state
or with a bird with a cooking method. Is just
some letters, you know. I like some letters better than others.
KFC are good ones. One more thing I do want
to mention here, and I think we should also just
mention this is a a general note about our episode.

(38:34):
I read another paper from Nine Perspectives in Biology and
Medicine by Mary Winkler and Carl Anderson called Vampires, Porphyria
and the media Medicalization of a myth, And essentially the
authors here take strong exception to the linking of the
vampire legend with porphyria diseases. Uh and they said this
this link resembled rumormongering more than science. It had never

(38:56):
even been formally presented in a scientific journal. It was
just sort of like some scientist with a funny idea
talking to the media and then the media running with
it in an irresponsible way. But they mentioned, you know this,
this kind of thing could also be damaging to the
actual image of these diseases, and two people who hold
them like they quote a guy who had read who

(39:18):
had a porphyria condition, who had read stuff like this
and had said, like, wait, does this mean I'm descended
from vampires? Now? And I think that's that should just
remind us, like, well, this is a super interesting question
to try to say, like, is this vampire legend rooted
in actual medical conditions? We should remember not to be

(39:38):
insensitive about the medical conditions real people have these, and
you know, it's good not to characterize these people as vampires,
recognize them as people with medical conditions. Now that being said,
if you were to pinpoint any cinematic vampires, TV vampires,
etcetera that the kind of line up with this disease,

(40:00):
which ones would you pick? I guess I'll have to
come back to that. I don't know which one this
would line up with, but I will say, in general,
my verdict on Porphyria as the the explanation for the
vampire lore. Thumbs down. I don't think this one carries
much weight at all conditions. Rare would not actually result
in drinking blood. About the only thing it has going

(40:22):
for it is the association with sensitivity to sunlight, which
is not even a universal part of the myth. Al Right, well,
on that note, we're going to take a quick break,
and when we come back, we will continue to diagnose
our vampires. Than all right, we're back, so, Robert. One
thing that I often think about with the vampire lore
is the vampires traditional association with the children of the night,

(40:48):
that the creatures of the forest, with wild beasts like
wolves and bats. Yeah, and just the overall ba steal
nature of the vampire. Um. This, this film has its
problems for sure. But brom Stoker's Dracula, which is really
Francis Ford Copula's Dracula, What problems are you talking about?
Because I can't think of any Oh, I guess I. I

(41:11):
I still hold a grudge against it based on kind
of a nitpicking, uh fact, and that is that when
quote unquote brom Stoker's Dracula came out, there was a
cool movie branded copy of brom Stoker's Dracula you could
buy at the bookstore. But then also there was a
novelization of the film, No, Yes, No, which was I get.

(41:34):
I can't remember what they called it. I guess it
was like Francis Ford Coppola's bron Stoker's Dracula. Did the
did the author of this novelization slip and stop calling
him Count Dracula and just start calling him Gary Oldman?
I never read it, but I remember seeing it on
the bookshelves when that film came out, and it made
me mad. I was like, no, if, if, if you
have to do a novelization of this film, then it

(41:57):
is not bron Stoker's Dracula, Because if it were rom
Stoker's Dracula, then the original book is the novelization of
the film. What's going on? That is a perversion of
our modern times? Because because brom Stoker's Dracula, it's a
great book. It's a very readable book, food for modern audiences.
You know. I wouldn't put it on the same level

(42:17):
as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but it is. It's a great book,
very readable. There was there was no need. I mean,
I'm glad that that somebody got a novelization job out
of it, but uh, it just seemed kind of plumosus
that being said, a fabulously fun film. That's that shows
us a number of different ideas of what the vampire

(42:38):
could be. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that movie
is great because it it just embraces the fact that
the story is bonkers and it asks us essentially to
side with the Count and not with the human heroes
who are fighting him. I love how Anthony Hopkins says
Van Helsing is just out of his mind and running
around like beheading she vampires left and right. Yeah, there's

(43:00):
a great line. One of my favorite parts of it
is they they're talking about after he beheads Lucy Western,
who you know, has turned into a vampire queen who
has turned into a vampire bride. You know he Uh,
They're like, was she in pain? And he says something like, yes,
she was in great pain, but then I cut off
our head and drove a stake through hard and burned

(43:20):
it and then she found peace. Well, when Anthony Hopkins
that lives the line, you know you're more invested. But
roll through real quick. The various versions of the vampire
the Gary Oldman takes in this film. Oh, let's see. Well,
he's definitely at some point I think a bat and
then like a big bat creature. It's almost like a
dog bat hybrid. At some point he's some kind of

(43:42):
bipedal wolf thing like werewolf. Yetie kind of creature. Uh,
it's at another point he's just it seems just like
a straightforward wolf for fox or something quadrupedal canid. Are
there other ones? Well, you could certainly those are the
more be steal forms. And then of course he also
takes the form of a extremely creepy old man with

(44:03):
with fabulous hair and gray hair. That hair, that's that's
what the movie is all about, is the Gary Oldman bun. Yes,
And then of course there's the young Gary Oldman, the
sexy vampire. So so it's it's it's interesting that it
manages to encompass all of these different versions of what
a vampire could be, but it certainly hits that animal.
Note that idea of the vampire is this bloodthirsty beast. Yeah,

(44:28):
and I like that it actually does include that, and
it puts it alongside him being a smooth, suave sunglasses
top hat wearing dandy about town in London. I also
love his armor in that film. I'm I'm forgetting the
historical lad vampire that we get the muscles. There's it's
so rich, there's so much good stuff. But you're right, yeah,
it does emphasize the be steel aspects. He turns into

(44:49):
animals in the movie. And this leads us to our
next disease. In our discussion here, as we inevitably try
to diagnose the vampire that's brought into our clinic, that
it snarling and biting and lunging at all of our
the other patients and doctors. Uh, this brings us to
rabies right now. It's it's easy to discount the horror

(45:11):
of rabies, especially you know in our modern world. Uh
Luis Pasteur devised preventative vaccine back in five and if
treated early, the disease is one pcent treatable. But rabies
is an old enemy. References to the disease date back
more than four thousand years to the ancient Mesopotamians. They're

(45:34):
very dawn of recorded history. So it's it's been with
us a while. Supplet's break down what it does. Rabies
is a viral disease that attack the central nervous system.
The virus centers the body, has the spinal column, and
heads straight to the brain for replication and destruction. And
it's just distressing enough to see the ravages of rabies

(45:54):
in an animal, but in humans it's it's it's even
more horrific. Uh. There are several different strains of rabies,
but we can break the virus down into two main types.
On one hand, there's a paralytic rabies and this is
typified by a weariness and a lethargy. But then encephalytic
rabies is more common, and this is where we see

(46:17):
foaming at the mouth. Uh, we see increased agitation, aggression, disorientation, hallucinations,
whatever the strain, though, it all culminates in paralysis and death.
So I mean I could basically stop there, and I
think everyone would see how this lines up with various
interpretations of the vampire, right you. I mean, you're talking

(46:39):
about a virus that attacks the nervous system and causes
erratic behavior. And whenever we think of erratic behavior, we think, okay, well,
maybe that could cause people who didn't understand what was
going on to think this person is turning into a monster, right,
and then towards the end they're incapacitated and kind of
in the state of of of of of living death. Right. Yeah,

(46:59):
But then again, you about how every virus. You know,
diseases need a route of transmission, and very often diseases
are evolutionarily smart. Like a disease that is spread by
aerosolized droplets in the air tends to make people cough
and sneeze, you know, the disease makes you coughin sneeze
so it can get to other carriers. And the rabies

(47:22):
virus is an ingenious hijacker in this regard because once
it takes over a host, it needs to spread. That's
a that's a genetic mission, and in order to fulfill
this mission, it generates the symptoms of that that mad
dog rage and the foaming mouth because guess what's in
that saliva. Guess what's in that foam. That's where the
rabies is ready to spread to the next animal or

(47:44):
human via a b steal bite. And what's more, the
virus instills a strong aversion to water in its victim
animal or human to ensure this frothy mouthful of doom
doesn't get washed away. Oh yeah, this is where the hydrophobia.
Like if you ever read is an old yeller where
they talk about rabies and they call it hydrophobia. I
only remember one moment and all the other and uh,

(48:07):
and I think everyone knows which moment that is. Well,
I think you know you read the older sources and
they call rabies hydrophobia. And I think this is because it, uh,
it tends to cause like difficulty swallowing that makes people
not able or want to drink water. Uh. Interestingly enough,
this came up in a Basilisk episode as well. So
just a health note if if you're ever bitten by
a wild animal, especially a bat, uh, seek medical attention

(48:29):
as soon as possible, because while again it is treatable
in its early stages, rabies is almost completely fatal in
the long term. Um, so you have left untreated, it
is almost certainly a death sentence. So seek care early. Yes,
so it makes sense that we might create monsters out
of rabies, out of observing cases of rabies, right, and

(48:52):
the idea that there might be a vampire connection. Uh,
this has been explored in the literature as well. Uh.
The hypothesis goes back. I would say, at least as
far as two the work of Gomez Alonso and J. Robbia.
Um and I'll get to one of Gomez Alonso's papers
in a bed here. But yeah, a lot of people

(49:13):
have chimed in on this, so like the rabies vampire
connection is seemingly pretty strong. Yeah, I read it mentioned
back in uh just a letter from nineteen ninety two
and the Animals of Internal Medicine by a I believe
a Dutch doctor named Alex Hike who wrote a letter
just about the ties between the possible ties between vampires

(49:34):
and rabies. And he writes, quote, although we may still
be fascinated by the vampire legend, we all now know
that the human vampire never really existed or did he
bump bump. A bite from an irrationally aggressive animal leads
to aggressively psychotic behavior in the human victim. Doesn't it
sound like rabies? In the agony of rabies, all affected
mammals may display such a hyper excitable phase. Even otherwise

(49:58):
placid insectivorous bats have been reported to attack humans and
other mammals. Human rabies, a hyper excitable psychotic phase is
also seen, although genuine biting behavior has rarely been reported. Uh,
and he mentions a paper by a doctor named lint Yourn,
which is case Studies of Rabies. That quote mentions a

(50:18):
fifteen year old rabid boy who bit off one of
his mother's fingertips. So it sounds like in human rabies infections,
biting is not a universal characteristic, but it can happen.
And again, it would only really have to happen once
for the story to really begin to generate. Right. So
I was looking at one of these papers by a

(50:39):
Juan Gomez Alonzo, MD, who wrote about it in Rabies
A Possible Explanation for the Vampire legend published in the
journal Historical Neurology from in which the author looks at
the hypothesis. So he starts off in this paper by
pointing out that, yes, in vampire legends of European folklore,
you often see dogs and other easts wrapped up in

(51:01):
the whole scenario. The vampire could take the form of
a beast, and in the form of a dog, it
could kill all the dogs of a village. And it's
also also maybe associated with wolves or cats, etcetera. I
don't know if there's any real connection here, but I
mean It makes me think about the way that animals
like cats especially are also associated with witchcraft. If you're

(51:21):
giving a kind of Christian demonology take on the vampire legend,
like you know which cats were often thought to be
the familiars of witches. Now in this paper, he he
also prizes a nice, uh overall sided look at some
of the frequent attributes of vamps. Some of these we've
already discussed, like the idea that they're mostly nocturnal. I

(51:42):
love this, uh that you could become a vampire by
being attacked by a vamp, eating the flesh of animals
killed by vamps quote, having been a great lover unquote,
or having died of plague, rabies, or other illnesses. Also,
if a corpse saw its own reflection in a mirror,
it could go a vamp. Uh what Yeah, how would
the corpse see the reflection? Just don't hold any mirrors

(52:04):
up to corpses, then you don't risk it at all.
Yeah uh yeah. This course ties into the whole supernatural
aspect of mirrors and the fact that most people really
don't understand how mirrors work. But but that's another another
topic for another episode. Um. Also, animals walking over a
grave could also do the trick. Yeah, he writes. Quote.

(52:25):
Signs that made a cadaver suspicious included good external appearance,
a swollen body full of liquid blood that flowed out
of the mouth, prominent genitalia, and the emission of a
cry when a steak was driven into it. Well, I'm
a little confused by that last one. The emission of
the cry. Well, there are this one's easily explained though.

(52:46):
I mean the idea, if you're you're exhuming a body, uh,
and it is say, bloated with various gases due to decomposition,
if you press on it or certainly drive a steak
into its heart, uh, some sort of sound might emerge.
It's kind of sound like a sigh potentially, or like
a sort of a grotesque um like necro mouth fart

(53:08):
kind of a situation. I don't know. Um. Well, I
mean this is another thing that has been considered a
very important part of the formation of vampire legends, which
is the counterintuitive appearance of exhumed corpses. That sometimes you
would dig up a body and people would look at
it and think, that doesn't look like I would expect
a decomposing body to look instead something about it looks

(53:31):
like it's you know, recently been alive or doing stuff
like it might have blood running from the mouth, or
it might somehow look healthy and bloated in the face,
like it's been gorging. Yeah, I mean the bloating of
corpses alone, you think of that. And I did not
encourage anyone to look up images of bloated corpses. But
if you do, uh, you will be astounded at how

(53:52):
bloated things can get. And I could see where one
might think, oh, well, this is this is an absurdly
bloated version of this individual we used to see around town.
How do they get so bloated? Perhaps they have been
eating something, perhaps they have been drinking something. Yeah, that's
sort of the full logic you would apply to seeing
a corpse look like this. Another thing about the corpses

(54:12):
that's been observed is the idea that um during postmortem decomposition,
sometimes skin will pull back away from things like fingernails
and teeth, you know, the surrounding tissue will draw back,
giving the appearance that things like fingernails and teeth have
grown longer in the grave. And so a lot of
stuff like this just ways that a corpse doesn't look

(54:34):
like a person would naively assume it should look after
it's been exhumed. That probably played a large role in
contributing to the vampire legend. And and then if you
get to the point where you're you're exhuming corpses to
look for signs of supernatural on life, I mean, you're
probably gonna find it. There's a sunk cost and digging

(54:55):
up that grave. Some of the papers we've been reading
for this episode point out, you know, one of the
things about the vampire records of vampire control activities is
that pretty much anytime people dug up a corpse to
find a vampire, it turns out, yep, it was a vampire. Yeah.
I mean maybe the stories of oh it's a negative,
sorry everybody, we can just go home, let's bury this

(55:16):
thing again, those don't make it into the newspaper now.
In this paper, Gomez Alonso also discusses the seeming link
between vampire behavior and limbic system disorders. He says, quote,
this brutish part of the brain plays the central role
in the regulation of emotion and behavior in patients with
diseases such as rabies and epilepsy. A clear link has

(55:36):
been found between aggressiveness and the dysfunction of some limbic
system regions, i e. The hypothalamus, the amygdaloid complex, the heppocampus. Likewise,
relation between has been shown in humans between altered sexual
behavior and some olymbic system structures such as the septal area.
Nocturnal activity may be present in patients with insomnia or

(55:59):
disruption of the sleep wake cycle. Both have been reported
in disorders of the anterior hypothalamus. So he is showing
that there could be some clear behavioral links between things
you might expect to see in a person who's suffering
the neurodegenerative effects of rabies and things that appear in
the vampire lore exactly. And of course, obviously we have

(56:22):
this animal interaction situation in vamp Empire, some vampire legends,
which gives us a link to zoonosis and and rabies
is a disease that best fits so symptoms that it
is transferred by animals and then can be transferred from
human to human via kind of animalistic attacks in some cases.

(56:43):
So yeah, the rabid human may froth of the mouth,
their facial muscles may twitch and reveal their teeth. And
these episodes may be triggered, he says, by changes in
the air uh, in the in water, or in even light,
like walking out into say bright sunlight. And then they
may act that the individual with rabies may act with

(57:04):
furious aggression towards other humans. Meanwhile, during quiet intervals, they
may lie in bed mentally alert, but with the work
of a look of like frozen horror, perhaps drooling bloody
saliva from their mouths. Uh. Nightmares and hallucinations may emerge
during this phase as well, which certainly can add to
this sense of horror. Uh. And again, this is a

(57:26):
phase that we thankfully see very little of in this
day and age, due to early rabies intervention in human patients.
I mean, generally speaking, I think we've gotten to the
point in most places where if someone has been bitten
by a wild animal, or even if you've been bitten
by a pet like a child as bit by a
pet dog. I belong to enough neighborhood groups on Facebook

(57:50):
that you see that that is is instantly a panic moment.
Because we have been we've kind of rehearsed this, you know, like,
what if there's there is a what if the animal
is at all rabbid like this has to be taken
care of in advance. Yeah, and I know. I mean,
one thing I've read about is that there definitely is
more of a rabies threat in say, more developing parts
of the world, where a lot of times it doesn't

(58:11):
necessarily come from like you know, the wild wolf for
something that comes from animals like straight dogs. In addition
to to this behavior though it's also a hyper sexual
activity has been observed prolonged directions. Um, the author says,
quote the literature reports cases of rabid patients who practiced
intercourse up to twenty times a day and who made

(58:32):
violent rape attempts. So the connection between animals is clear here.
And and the connection between not only human and animal behavior,
but but between like normal human behavior and like animalistic
savage models of how humans could behave And he says
it's also worth noting that while the bide is the
main way rabies is transmitted, he says, there are accounts

(58:54):
in the literature of sexual transmission as well. Um, and
this with time that you mentioned earlier idea that some
of the vampire folklore has uh highlights I don't know,
questionable sexual activity or what they would have considered questionable
sexual activity. Yeah. Yeah, And then he also mentions that,
you know, biting is not necessarily I mean, biden could

(59:15):
be part of sexual activity as well. I mean there
are Sexual activity is kind of a big tent that
contains a lot of different things and contain and can
also encompass a number of different bodily fluids, which could
contain the rabies, sort of a carnival of disease vectors. Yes, now,
rabies is also this is interesting, seven times more likely

(59:36):
in males than in females, he tells us, thus lining
up with the frequent masculine vampire trope. Especially that was
he says, was president during that time. Also worth noting,
he says that in the eighteen hundreds, UH there were
there was a fairly large rabies epidemic among animals in
places like Hungary. Rabid animals typically die within two weeks

(59:59):
by his fit sea or cardio respiratory arrest, and modes
of death UH in this case may produce a persistence
of liquid blood, turgent genitalia, and the emission of sperm. UH.
Though he also notes though that when wild animals UH
presented these symptoms or certainly of the human exhibited these

(01:00:20):
these symptoms, it was probably more likely that they would
be killed before they reached this point, especially if there's
a pervasive vampire myth in in the area. One can
only imagine uh. And he also argues that you know
this is likely. There's likely a connection between rabies and
many Greek myths uh and the werewolf legend as well.
All right, so, Robert, do you have a verdict on

(01:00:43):
the validity of this and explaining the inspiration of vampire lore.
I think we've said so far that syphilis might be
a good candidate for explaining some cases, especially maybe some
more modern cases. We think that porphyria is not a
good explanation of vampire of the origin of vampire lore.
What do think about rabies? Well, I think that this
the overall fear that I mean, the fear of our

(01:01:05):
b steal nature, the fear of behaving like an animal,
of giving ourselves over entirely to violent or carnal impulses.
That that is a that's a fear that will never
go away, and it's just part of our human nature.
And in this case, we do have a medical condition
that that lines up with that fear. So well, uh So, Yeah,

(01:01:27):
I'm pretty sold on the idea that if they were
just even notable cases of human rabies, much less an epidemic,
it could definitely have uh it could send shock waves
through the folklore traditions of a given region. But then again,
I'm I'm hesitant to I'm not only hesitant, I mean

(01:01:48):
I'm opposed to saying vampire vampire is m equals rabies.
I think that that would be going a little too far.
But they do line up in interesting ways. We've tried
to emphasize several times. I think that we're not going
to push a vamporism equals some disease or some condition. Here.
We we know that the inspiration behind folklore and and

(01:02:09):
belief in mythical beasts and stuff is number one, more
complex than that. Number two, it's influenced by pure creative imagination.
Number three, The connections we make with known medical diseases
today are all it's all just inferences. You know, we
we don't know for sure what was going on then,
what caused it? Yeah, I will say if you if
you want to learn more about rabies, you should check
out I honestly can't remember remember it was a radio

(01:02:32):
Lab or This American Life. I think it was Radio Lab.
They did an episode on rabies and it includes audio
recordings or a snippet of an audio recording of a
human rabies case. And you hear this, this like the
guttural howling of the individual. Uh so listen to that.
It'll it'll haunt you for the rest of your life.

(01:02:52):
And if you think you have rabies exposure, by all means,
get to a hospital immediately. Absolutely. All right, Well, I
think we have to call it there for today, but
join us again next time for part two of our
two part exploration of the link between medical conditions and
the origins of the vampire legend. That's right, the clinic
is gonna close for a day, but then it's gonna

(01:03:12):
reopen on Thursday and we will will explore even more
on this topic. We we figured this one would be
a natural episode displute into because I think everybody's down
for vampires during the month of October, and there's just
a lot to talk about here. In the meantime, if
you want to check out more episodes of stuff to
blow your mind, especially are our seasonal offerings that occur

(01:03:33):
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(01:04:17):
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(01:05:00):
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