Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And of course, since it's October, we're still in our
Speaker 1: month long celebration of monster science, horror science, spooky science
Speaker 1: all month long, and today we're bringing you another entry.
Speaker 1: This time we're gonna be taking a visit to the
Speaker 1: vampire clinic. That's right. We have all of these various
Speaker 1: vampire patients coming in, uh, family members bringing them in
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, straight jackets, caskets, what have you,
Speaker 1: all of them with a seemingly insatiable appetite for blood.
Speaker 1: But how how are the doctors here supposed to treat
Speaker 1: these various vampires because there's not simply one vampire, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, all we have to do is look around
Speaker 1: at the at the wealth of of of global folklore
Speaker 1: and legend to see that there are multiple varieties of
Speaker 1: vampire out there. How are we to figure out exactly
Speaker 1: what ailment might be causing any given one of them? Right?
Speaker 1: You know? I I think despite the fact that sometimes
Speaker 1: when you hear people complain about the vampire movies of today.
Speaker 1: They will specifically complain about the lack of consistency and
Speaker 1: the rules that the vampire must adhere to in order
Speaker 1: to survive or be defeated or whatever, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. Like they're saying there needs to be
Speaker 1: more consistency, Like people complain like what this movie had
Speaker 1: a vampire that like, yeah, what this vampire didn't respond
Speaker 1: to across or oh what you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: But I feel exactly the opposite. I I do not
Speaker 1: think there should be more consistency in what supernatural rules
Speaker 1: apply to vampires in the movies. I think there should
Speaker 1: be less consistency and more variety to reflect the fact
Speaker 1: that the vampire, long before it emerged as a sort
Speaker 1: of twentieth century movie monster with with well established tropes
Speaker 1: and cliches that you can repeat in every single monster
Speaker 1: movie down the road, it was, it was a folk
Speaker 1: almost at folk hero, certainly not a fulk hero of
Speaker 1: folk monster, a monster of the people of the folk
Speaker 1: lore you know, spread from house to house, from town
Speaker 1: to town, beliefs about the dead coming back to life,
Speaker 1: beliefs about how they drain the vitality of the living.
Speaker 1: There are a few things that are consistent, but other
Speaker 1: than that, there's a lot of variety. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the reasons we see a lot of variety
Speaker 1: in vampire folklore is the close association with vampires and
Speaker 1: real historical biological diseases, which of course there is plenty
Speaker 1: of variety in as well. Yeah, I mean globally you
Speaker 1: look at them and they range from spectral forces to
Speaker 1: physical blood drinkers, from humanoid monsters to things best described
Speaker 1: as great flesh bags or or chimerical hybrids that have
Speaker 1: you know, involved beast parts. Right. Uh, And you know,
Speaker 1: we obviously love vampires on the show We're very We're
Speaker 1: a pro vampire podcast. I think we're we're recovering to
Speaker 1: the vampire position, right. Vampires got a little stale for
Speaker 1: a while there in the movies. Well, I think the
Speaker 1: things that get stale are first of all, a tendency
Speaker 1: to only adhere to very certain aspects of the vampire
Speaker 1: trope and not and this, and not realizing they have
Speaker 1: this rich heritage that you need to you you could
Speaker 1: be drawing from, Like how many vampire movies utilize their
Speaker 1: fascination with with knots and uh and and chords. You
Speaker 1: know where they have some sort of intricate pattern that
Speaker 1: keeps them occupied until the sun comes up. How many?
Speaker 1: How many use the throw rice on the ground or
Speaker 1: seeds on the ground so they have to stop and
Speaker 1: count them. Yeah, that sort of thing. Um or or
Speaker 1: the idea which we will touch on later, the the
Speaker 1: idea that you could become a vampire simply by being
Speaker 1: a magnificent lover. That's almost never explored as a vampire origin.
Speaker 1: I don't think I know that one. Yeah, like that,
Speaker 1: that's one that's sited in one of the papers we
Speaker 1: look at. If you're just a fabulous lover, you might
Speaker 1: turn into a vampire. I want to see that in
Speaker 1: the film. Yeah, it should, well, I mean it should
Speaker 1: show up because there should be more variety, like I'm saying,
Speaker 1: in the vampire movies. I think we're on the same
Speaker 1: page about this. And then the other thing too is
Speaker 1: we can't always blame it on the vampire. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just a poor movie or poor script or performance. Is
Speaker 1: there any other man? The many factors that can hurt
Speaker 1: a vampire film. But no matter what, the baseline principle
Speaker 1: behind the vampire continues to resonate that you have this
Speaker 1: sort of human but ultimately an human thing that wants
Speaker 1: to drain our life force. And there are any number
Speaker 1: of cultural and psychological angles to take on all of this, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, the racial treatment of the vampire legend, the
Speaker 1: the emotional aspects of vampireism. Sexual issues with vamporism are
Speaker 1: long for immortality, but there's almost always this this element
Speaker 1: of contagion, right, some physical change uh, in physiological other
Speaker 1: news that can be acquired, and that's what we're going
Speaker 1: to be focusing on today, the element of contagion, of disease,
Speaker 1: of physiological change. We want to explore the medical side
Speaker 1: of the vampire legend, uh, and this is a territory
Speaker 1: that's extremely rich. So there's no way we're gonna have
Speaker 1: time today to explore all of the fascinating ways that
Speaker 1: you can look at vampire legends from from a medical standpoint,
Speaker 1: where we're going to explore some of the most interesting
Speaker 1: ones right now, there's a lot of fascinating ground to
Speaker 1: cover on the subject in the link between uh, medical
Speaker 1: conditions and diseases and the vampire lore. So this is
Speaker 1: going to be part one of a two part episode.
Speaker 1: We hope you'll stick around for both of them. And
Speaker 1: if some of you out there are are listening to
Speaker 1: this and you're saying, well, Robert and Joe, I'm not
Speaker 1: really a vampire fan. I'm more of a werewolf fan. Well,
Speaker 1: the good news is that there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: werewolf in here too. A lot of the things that
Speaker 1: we're discussing here you could potentially apply to myths of werewolf,
Speaker 1: any kind of myth where people are taking on some
Speaker 1: sort of you know, physiological otherness. Yes. And another thing
Speaker 1: I would say is that the vampire lore and the
Speaker 1: werewolf lore are not quite so distinct in their origins
Speaker 1: as they have become in the movies of today. Uh So,
Speaker 1: obviously we're not going to be assuming today that vampires
Speaker 1: are real, but we can ask what goes to explain
Speaker 1: the origins of vampire folklore. And of course, as always, Robert,
Speaker 1: you and I are fond of emphasizing that sometimes in
Speaker 1: seeking the inspiration behind mythical beasts and monsters and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, we sometimes underplay the potential role of
Speaker 1: creative imagination. Right, Sometimes writers and storytellers just use their
Speaker 1: imagination and make things up, And sometimes these made up
Speaker 1: stories become very popular and spread far and wide, but
Speaker 1: also sometimes mythical beasts and stories are indeed inspired by
Speaker 1: aspects of reality, of nature, of human history being misinterpreted
Speaker 1: as supernatural. And so we're gonna look at how that
Speaker 1: last part applies to the idea of vampires. Could vampires
Speaker 1: be an example of something in nature being misinterpreted, not
Speaker 1: simply a product of creative imagination, but based in a
Speaker 1: misunderstanding of real biology and nature at work, interpreted through
Speaker 1: the superstitious lenses of human culture. And of course, as
Speaker 1: we we've we've hinted at an obvious place to look
Speaker 1: for this kind of inspiration for vampire lore would be
Speaker 1: in human diseases. It turns out lots of human diseases
Speaker 1: over the years have been linked to vampireism, so many
Speaker 1: that we can't talk about all of them. But today
Speaker 1: we we we want to take a quick tour through
Speaker 1: the medical view of vampireism. So let's settle into the
Speaker 1: vampire clinic. Robert, you started to paint a picture of
Speaker 1: this earlier. Yeah, we imagine we're in a wing of
Speaker 1: Dark Place Hospital and uh, and Dr Lucian Sanchez is
Speaker 1: waiting to see the next patient who comes in at
Speaker 1: the vampire clinic. So we got a waiting room full
Speaker 1: of people who have brought their loved ones suspecting they
Speaker 1: may be vampires, they may be becoming vampires, they may
Speaker 1: be at risk of becoming vampires. And they've all got
Speaker 1: to see Dr Sanchez and say, tell me what's going on? Doc?
Speaker 1: Can you help my vampire uncle? Yeah? And the confusing
Speaker 1: thing is that these different vampire patients, they do have
Speaker 1: at times drastically different characteristics. Some are are pale and
Speaker 1: frothing blood uh summer uh summer, or violent. Some are
Speaker 1: more carnal in their their desires, you know. Some are
Speaker 1: creeping along like like Count Orlock from nos Ferato. Others
Speaker 1: are are just waltzing in, glittering like the vampires from Twilight.
Speaker 1: Surely these are all different ailments. They most surely are. Now.
Speaker 1: I think one patient that we can get out of
Speaker 1: the way fairly quickly, not because it's not interesting, but
Speaker 1: because it's kind of a different direction than we want
Speaker 1: to go in today is the patient who presents to
Speaker 1: Dr Lucien Sanchez with clinical vamporism. This would be a
Speaker 1: term that is not so much a disease of the body,
Speaker 1: but this would be a mental disorder that tends to
Speaker 1: entail aspects of necrophilia, of cannibalism, of sadism, of necrophagia,
Speaker 1: and fascination with blood. This is when you get, for example,
Speaker 1: people who are actually drinking blood, not because they are
Speaker 1: supernatural vampires, but because they have an unfortunate mental disorder
Speaker 1: right that may or may not be um influenced by
Speaker 1: existing vampire fiction, kind of giving them something to feed
Speaker 1: on with their delusions. Now, putting that aside, the first
Speaker 1: patient that I think we should see in the clinic
Speaker 1: today is one that you've visited before on this podcast, Robert,
Speaker 1: which is the vampire who in fact is experiencing an
Speaker 1: infection of syphilis. Yes, and indeed, Julie Douglas and I
Speaker 1: discussed this at length in two episodes that we did
Speaker 1: on syphilis, and we recently relaunched these episodes as a
Speaker 1: single vault episode of stuff to blow your mind. So
Speaker 1: if you want the full deep dive on that, you
Speaker 1: should probably go back to the syphilis episodes, right, But
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna I'm gonna try and condense it here
Speaker 1: and give you, like just the the vampire syphilis cell
Speaker 1: on the whole thing. So First of all, I just
Speaker 1: need to run through what is syphilis. Many of you
Speaker 1: may not know, uh, you should know because it is.
Speaker 1: It is still around and it has been a highly
Speaker 1: influential um uh disease on human history. Yeah, you might
Speaker 1: say it is a major player in the cast of biohistory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely so. Syphilis is a chronic, sexually transmitted disease caused
Speaker 1: by the spiral keep bacterium Treponema palladum palatum or T. Palatum.
Speaker 1: The illness spread through Europe from the mid fifteenth century onward,
Speaker 1: and despite the twentieth century advancement of antibiotics, which is
Speaker 1: really the you know, the silver bullet that that that
Speaker 1: took out a lot of the threat posed by syphilis. Regardless,
Speaker 1: syphilis remains a global health concern, especially when you when
Speaker 1: you consider that more than a million pregnant women pass
Speaker 1: syphilis onto unborn children each year. According to the World
Speaker 1: Health Organization, this forum, known as congenital syphilis, causes severe,
Speaker 1: disabling and lethal health complications for the developing fetus. Now,
Speaker 1: in non congenital cases, the primary infection of syphilis occurs
Speaker 1: when T. Palatum enters the body, leaving a sore or
Speaker 1: sores at the side of transmission for three to six weeks.
Speaker 1: Then a secondary infection pops up in the weeks following
Speaker 1: the primary infection. At this point, the initial te paatum
Speaker 1: invasion is over, and now the enemy moves through the host.
Speaker 1: A rash spreads across the entire body, accompanying accompanied by
Speaker 1: various symptoms such as fever, lethargy, headaches, aches, and hair loss.
Speaker 1: At this point, the host will enter a latent or
Speaker 1: or hidden stage of the disease, and the T. Palatum
Speaker 1: invasion is still present the body, but it's just no
Speaker 1: longer contagious. You can think how that kind of hidden section,
Speaker 1: or any any disease that has a latency period like that,
Speaker 1: that makes it harder to discern exactly where the symptoms
Speaker 1: you're experiencing are coming from or what caused them. Those
Speaker 1: can help contribute to supernatural interpretations exactly. And it also
Speaker 1: makes it all the more dangerous, right because you you
Speaker 1: you get sick and then it seems like you get better,
Speaker 1: but it's not the case. You still are carrying um
Speaker 1: uh T palatum inside your body. Uh. And also I
Speaker 1: should point out as far as symptoms go, syphialus was
Speaker 1: often referred to as the Great Imitator because it would
Speaker 1: it would the symptoms were not necessarily just you know ABC. Uh.
Speaker 1: In a way, it kind of ties in nicely with
Speaker 1: what we're discussing, uh in regards to the vampire myth.
Speaker 1: So it became difficult to to diagnose at times. I mean,
Speaker 1: how many diseases have flu like symptoms exactly, these diseases
Speaker 1: that are easy to mistake for each other. Now there's
Speaker 1: another step to all of this that goes into decidedly
Speaker 1: more monstrous territory. Finally, and roughly fifteen to thirty of
Speaker 1: those infected, the syphilis enters its late stage, also known
Speaker 1: as the tertiary stay age, and it occurs ten to
Speaker 1: twenty years after the initial infection, and the cavalcade of
Speaker 1: symptoms include tissue damage, muscle damage, oregon damage, coordination problems, paralysis, numbness,
Speaker 1: gradual blindness, dementia, and death. Um. This is where you
Speaker 1: really get into the period where syphilis, um, you know,
Speaker 1: has just this disastrous debilitating effects on say, facial features.
Speaker 1: I've often mentioned on the show before. If anyone wants
Speaker 1: to just a fabulous bit of medical history UH television,
Speaker 1: they should watch The Nick, which was the Soderberg television series,
Speaker 1: went to two seasons. Clive Owens, Yeah, Clive Owens plays
Speaker 1: Dr Thackeray, Uh, you know, cutting edge of physician of
Speaker 1: the of the time. But this is and and there's
Speaker 1: a whole plot line in it where he's treating um
Speaker 1: an individual with syphilis, and this is uh, this is
Speaker 1: pre antibiotics. So there's only so much you can do.
Speaker 1: But it's a very well done examination of syphilis in
Speaker 1: that show. So, according to Slavic and comparative literature professor
Speaker 1: Thomas Longanovic, commentators have often drawn a line of comparison
Speaker 1: between the vampire uh and hereditary syphilis, especially hereditary again
Speaker 1: being that that has passed from a mother to a child.
Speaker 1: Because this it twists and decimates the features uh it uh,
Speaker 1: and it can result in sharp, pointy teeth also known
Speaker 1: as Hutchinson's teeth, long nails, and elongated skulls and so superficially,
Speaker 1: it's easy to look at extreme cases of late syphilis
Speaker 1: and compare them to something like count like Count Orlock
Speaker 1: from the film Nosferato. Oh yeah, now the nose Ferrato
Speaker 1: tradition especially this comes through in in later versions of
Speaker 1: the Lord. It might not be there quite so much
Speaker 1: in earlier versions, but like in Werner Hertzog's adaptation of No.
Speaker 1: S Farrato, there's a clear link between the vampire and disease.
Speaker 1: Maybe not so much explicitly syphilis, but like in in
Speaker 1: Hertzog's Nos f a To, the vampire brings plague rats
Speaker 1: with him where he goes. Yeah, he arrives on a
Speaker 1: ship too. I mean the way a number of contagions
Speaker 1: suddenly spread their way through an ever widening world. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's also been pointed out that while we uh
Speaker 1: we we don't know the exact cause of brom Stoker's
Speaker 1: death in nine uh, some biographers do attribute his death
Speaker 1: to possibly being tertiary syphilis. So there is this idea
Speaker 1: that perhaps, um, perhaps this is a this is a
Speaker 1: big elf here, the vampire story that is presented in
Speaker 1: popularized through Dracula has a direct link to the experience
Speaker 1: of syphilis. Oh. You can almost imagine a kind of
Speaker 1: cronenbergie in take on that on the composition of the
Speaker 1: story with that in mind. Now, if I were to
Speaker 1: present though a clear case, I mean, there are a
Speaker 1: number of cases I think of of cinematic vampires and
Speaker 1: TV vampires that match up with this. So we've already
Speaker 1: mentioned or Lock. I think you could also throw in
Speaker 1: any version of a vampire where at first they're beautiful
Speaker 1: and then like a hideous nature's revealed. I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: Samahiak and from Dusk Till Dawn. But the best example
Speaker 1: it's clearly Count spiral Keet himself, which was from a
Speaker 1: a U. S. Military um educational animated film about the
Speaker 1: dangers of syphilis. What I didn't know about this? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I recommend everyone check it out. If you just go
Speaker 1: to YouTube and you do a search for Count spiral
Speaker 1: Keet or just Count Syphilis, I guess it'll probably come
Speaker 1: up for that as well. It's just this, uh, this wonderful,
Speaker 1: weird educational film about the dangers of syphilis. Oh. I
Speaker 1: just looked it up. I'm seeing okay. It's got a
Speaker 1: kind of like pink panther kind of animation style. Also
Speaker 1: looks like it might have some uh some somewhat sexist imagery,
Speaker 1: like casting the female form as like a like a
Speaker 1: target of disease delivery. Yeah, you see this a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean I don't want to go down the syphilis
Speaker 1: wormhole too much here, but um, you see that a
Speaker 1: lot too, and messaging of the of of the the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, especially where they're they're warning men about
Speaker 1: the dangers of syphilis and in doing so, they're warning
Speaker 1: them about the dangers of females and they're portraying females.
Speaker 1: Is this kind of monstrous creature ultimately like a hidden
Speaker 1: monstrous nature. Now, of course, one has to take into
Speaker 1: account of the primary target of these messages. We're you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about men that are in the military at
Speaker 1: the listed men, listed men. But uh, but at the
Speaker 1: same time, it is kind of creepy and and clearly
Speaker 1: there's this strain of misogyny to the messages. It's almost
Speaker 1: the same way that you couldn't just warn children about
Speaker 1: the dangers of drowning in the pool and the old
Speaker 1: moral pit. You had to make up a monster that
Speaker 1: lived there and would pull them in. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: you can't just warn people about the dangers of unprotected
Speaker 1: sexual intercourse. You have to like sort of make the
Speaker 1: person that they might be having X with into a
Speaker 1: monster of some kind. Yeah. Indeed, though thought at the
Speaker 1: heart that we we do have to drive home. So syphilis, yes, uh,
Speaker 1: contagious and can do very debilitating things to your body
Speaker 1: and also your mind. But for the most part that look,
Speaker 1: there's not this link of of syphilis making anybody want
Speaker 1: to drink blood or anything like that. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: So it's I think it's a it's a there's a
Speaker 1: it lines up in interesting ways with the vampire myth.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't. I'm certainly not one to say, oh, vampires,
Speaker 1: that's syphilis. Okay, So a mixed bag on this one.
Speaker 1: A few a few things that say this could have
Speaker 1: inspired some vampire lore, possibly especially maybe in the modern age,
Speaker 1: but it's not a super strong link. Still, those vampires
Speaker 1: that have come to the clinic that that that look
Speaker 1: a little or locking in. We'll just give him some
Speaker 1: antibiotics and yes, and see if we can't sort that out.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we need to take a quick ad
Speaker 1: break and then we will be right back. Alright, we're back. Okay.
Speaker 1: Are you ready to look at the next patient at
Speaker 1: the Dark Place Vampire clinic. Let's do it. Okay, So
Speaker 1: this next one, I think is going to be and
Speaker 1: it's going to be kind of a false trail, but
Speaker 1: an interesting one raising some good questions about science, communication,
Speaker 1: and the media. So I want to start this next
Speaker 1: one by looking at a New York Times article from
Speaker 1: nineteen five by Philip M. Boffi called rare disease proposed
Speaker 1: as cause for vampires. I like how it they used
Speaker 1: the word cause. It's not like inspiration, but like cause,
Speaker 1: like it made vampires. And I think they're that that
Speaker 1: might show up again in some other media that we
Speaker 1: should be wary of. So this article is presenting ideas
Speaker 1: by someone named Dr David H. Dolphin, who is a
Speaker 1: Canadian biochemist at the University of British Columbia, and Dr
Speaker 1: Dolphin apparently suggested in a talk at the American Association
Speaker 1: of the Advancement of Science or AS that va Empire
Speaker 1: and werewolf legends might be rooted in the effects of
Speaker 1: porphyria diseases. Now, porphyria diseases, I'll go into more detail
Speaker 1: about them in a bit, but they're essentially a malfunction
Speaker 1: of the body's ability to manufacture important compounds in the blood.
Speaker 1: And this malfunction of the manufacturing of these compounds leads
Speaker 1: to a build up of byproducts in the body that
Speaker 1: can be harmful about. The article says about one out
Speaker 1: of every two hundred thousand people are affected, and Dr
Speaker 1: Dolphin gives some reasons. He thinks that porphyria diseases may
Speaker 1: have inspired the vampire legends. So, first of all, vampires
Speaker 1: obviously hate the sun. Aversion to sunlight, right, Indeed, that's
Speaker 1: one of the rules of emperiism that is there is
Speaker 1: most commonly portrayed, I would say, especially in the modern age.
Speaker 1: Actually maybe less universal in the older folk beliefs. But
Speaker 1: he says that porphyria diseases can leave the skin extremely
Speaker 1: sensitive to sunlight, to the extent that even mild exposure
Speaker 1: to sunlight could cause disfiguring in jury to the skin
Speaker 1: and quote caused the nose and fingers to fall off
Speaker 1: and make the lips and gums so taught that the teeth,
Speaker 1: although no larger than ordinary, look like they are jutting
Speaker 1: out in a menacing animal like manner. And at a
Speaker 1: time before modern medicine or modern medical understanding, this could
Speaker 1: lead someone suffering from porphyria to only leave the house
Speaker 1: at night because of the dangers of the sunlight. Quote.
Speaker 1: Some victims of the disease also become very hairy, he said,
Speaker 1: conceivably one of nature's efforts to protect the skin from
Speaker 1: the sun. Uh. And so this makes a link to
Speaker 1: the werewolf legend also, of course, but apparently Dr Dolphin
Speaker 1: was not the first to suggest porphyria could have contributed
Speaker 1: to werewolf legend. He might have been the first to
Speaker 1: make the link to vampires. You know, this is also
Speaker 1: interesting to think about in terms of sunglasses, which which
Speaker 1: you and I have research for an upcoming side project.
Speaker 1: I guess you'd say, but without access to modern sunglasses,
Speaker 1: what could you do if you had a severe reaction
Speaker 1: to sunlight? I mean, you could wear hats and hoods certainly,
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't be able to just throw on a
Speaker 1: pair of all encompassing um spectacles that will shield your
Speaker 1: eyes from the fearsome light of day. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I wonder if what the sensitivity to light is in
Speaker 1: an ocular sense. It's definitely there in the skin, um,
Speaker 1: but it could affect the eyes as well. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you could cover yourself up with just make
Speaker 1: sure you're you're fully covered. I mean, you know this
Speaker 1: one there there is there that might be regarded as
Speaker 1: suspicious as well. As villagers as well. There's because there's
Speaker 1: some vampire film that I saw a part of on
Speaker 1: TV ages ago. Maybe listeners can chime in if if
Speaker 1: you don't know the name of this film. But the
Speaker 1: vampires are seeing like walking around in the daylight in
Speaker 1: I think Texas somewhere, and they're covering themselves with like
Speaker 1: super thick sunblock, like just basically and like like pasty
Speaker 1: white face with big sunglasses on. Uh. And it and
Speaker 1: it's the near dark. I don't think it's No, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not near dark. They do a little bit of
Speaker 1: walking around in the daylight like super bundled up. And
Speaker 1: I love near dark to know it. But but this
Speaker 1: is something else and I'm suddenly remembering it for the
Speaker 1: first time in a while. No, I don't know what
Speaker 1: it is right in let us know, Okay. So the
Speaker 1: next thing Dr Dolphin says is I think where his theory.
Speaker 1: We can explain this more later, but this is where
Speaker 1: I think he starts really going off the rails. So
Speaker 1: he says a major treatment at the time in porphyria
Speaker 1: conditions was the injection of a compound called hem him
Speaker 1: is an iron containing compounds, so it's got iron in it.
Speaker 1: It's it's part of a class of compounds known as
Speaker 1: the porphyrion class, and it's this it makes part of
Speaker 1: hemoglobin in the blood and some other important molecules in
Speaker 1: the body, but essentially it's important for transporting oxygen to
Speaker 1: the body's tissues through the blood. Of course, him is
Speaker 1: a constituent of blood found in human blood, so Dolphin says,
Speaker 1: pre modern victims of porphyria could conceivably have treated their
Speaker 1: own condition by drinking large quantities of the blood of
Speaker 1: others which contained the heam they needed. Now, in a
Speaker 1: quote given elsewhere and reported by the Associated Press, Dolphins said, quote,
Speaker 1: My theory is that in the Middle Ages, if you
Speaker 1: couldn't get an injection of heam, which you clearly couldn't,
Speaker 1: the next best thing would be to drink a lot
Speaker 1: of blood. Now we'll get more into this in a minute,
Speaker 1: but immediately when reading that, I had some thoughts. I
Speaker 1: was like, wait a second, Now, that would require the
Speaker 1: person with the porphyria condition to either have some kind
Speaker 1: of instinct or you know, so instinctual knowledge of that
Speaker 1: they should drink blood. That seems unlikely, or they would
Speaker 1: have to somehow acquire the knowledge that blood drinking could
Speaker 1: relieve their symptoms, and how would they learn this? Now,
Speaker 1: certainly there's there's something to be said about the about
Speaker 1: our appetite and uh, and how we all will find
Speaker 1: ourselves sometimes crave the thing that our body needs. Right,
Speaker 1: But that's not that would be based on normal evolved
Speaker 1: cravings that are that are common to people. Right. Evolution
Speaker 1: doesn't select for cravings that are only going to occur
Speaker 1: in one out of every two hundred thousand people or something. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's making a number of people think of
Speaker 1: those scenes in various vampire films where like the hunger
Speaker 1: begins to creep in and they don't know what it is,
Speaker 1: and so that that the first thing they do is
Speaker 1: they start like I'm thinking of Chronos for example, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Del Toro Vampire's great one where he sees like somebody's
Speaker 1: had a nosebleed on the floor of a bathroom and
Speaker 1: he's compelled to lick it off the floor. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean that that's great in supernatural vampire movies. I don't
Speaker 1: think that makes sense biologically, but we'll we'll come back
Speaker 1: to this. Another caveat here, of course, is that Dolphin
Speaker 1: did not have direct evidence that the body could acquire
Speaker 1: him in the needed way by ingesting it orally. Another
Speaker 1: question I'd have is, okay, even if you accept this,
Speaker 1: that that they would get him from blood drinking blood,
Speaker 1: why the blood of humans and not animals. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: so much easier to acquire uh and just go to
Speaker 1: the butcher shopping. It's some animal, Beloyeah, you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about being, you know, anybody dragging you through
Speaker 1: the streets and executecuting you in the town square. I mean,
Speaker 1: unless it's a really beloved animal. Obviously. Another part of
Speaker 1: dolphins hypothesis is okay, so, how did the bite of
Speaker 1: a porphyria vampire turn somebody else into a vampire? Well,
Speaker 1: it didn't, but it might have seemed to. Dolphin quote
Speaker 1: suggested that brothers and sisters could have shared the defective
Speaker 1: gene that causes the diseases the porphyria diseases, but that
Speaker 1: only one of them might have experienced symptoms of the disease.
Speaker 1: If that victim then bit a sibling to get blood,
Speaker 1: the shock of the experience might have triggered an attack
Speaker 1: of the disease in the bitten sibling. Thus producing another vampire.
Speaker 1: But this was the Middle Ages, so you would imagine
Speaker 1: that like just every day would be kind of shocking,
Speaker 1: or nothing would be shocking because he was so numb
Speaker 1: to it. Now, I don't I'm gonna present several reasons
Speaker 1: for not agreeing with this hypothesis, but I will say
Speaker 1: at least in favor of that when vampiresm does seem
Speaker 1: to be a thing that in the folklore is very
Speaker 1: often passed from one family member to another. Right, It's
Speaker 1: not so much like you know, the vampire goes out
Speaker 1: to the stuff you see in the movies today where
Speaker 1: they go out to the nightclub or something and they
Speaker 1: bite a victim. Vamporism in the folks since very often
Speaker 1: was like you had one sibling in the family die
Speaker 1: and then it was assumed that that sibling would come
Speaker 1: back from the dead as a vampire to get other
Speaker 1: members of the family or other members from the community. Finally,
Speaker 1: aversion to garlic. Dolphins says why the fear of garlic, Well,
Speaker 1: he claims garlic contains a chemical that makes symptoms of
Speaker 1: porphyria diseases worse than He doesn't say what that chemical is. Then,
Speaker 1: the mere fact that he's bringing in the garlic and
Speaker 1: does make it sound like he's really going for an
Speaker 1: all inclusive um model for vampireism here, which which I
Speaker 1: I love that kind of thing. Like certainly I can
Speaker 1: think to a number of vampire movies or books where
Speaker 1: they really try and roll out a nice science explanation
Speaker 1: for what's happening. Um, I think of Peter Watts. Peter Watts, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when it rolls out his space vampire in that
Speaker 1: or I'm also thinking of I am legend. He always
Speaker 1: had a pretty robust kind of science the explanation for
Speaker 1: what's going on. Yeah, that can be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I think Peter Watts is my favorite, uh sci fi
Speaker 1: ing of a supernatural legend I've ever encountered. Like the
Speaker 1: way he turns vampires into a biological creature is super
Speaker 1: interesting and the book there is blind site if anyone
Speaker 1: wants to check that out in greater detail. But this
Speaker 1: is not a sci fi novel, no. Uh So after
Speaker 1: this for a while, this seemed to really catch on
Speaker 1: in the media, this idea that porphyria diseases could be
Speaker 1: the cause of vampire legends, or as some headlines would say,
Speaker 1: created vampires like porphyria made people into vampires, and a
Speaker 1: lot of experts hit back really hard against this hypothesis
Speaker 1: and against the association characterizing the whole porphyria vampire thing
Speaker 1: has stupid, evidentially unjustified, and even harmful to people with porphyria. Um.
Speaker 1: So just a little bit more on porphyria diseases in general.
Speaker 1: First of all, there is more than one kind of
Speaker 1: porphyria condition. Porphyria's can be inherited or acquired, but most
Speaker 1: are inherited and they're classed in different categories according to
Speaker 1: their symptoms. So there are acute or neurological porphyrias which
Speaker 1: attack the nervous system, and then there are cutaneous or
Speaker 1: dermatological porphyrias which attack primarily the skin. And in general,
Speaker 1: porphyria diseases constitute a malfunction of the process creating hemoglobin,
Speaker 1: which is this protein in red blood cells that carries
Speaker 1: and delivers oxygen to tissues within the body. An important
Speaker 1: part of hemo globin is, as I mentioned earlier, the
Speaker 1: iron containing compound heam, and now the human body manufactures
Speaker 1: the heam it needs in bone, marrow and in the
Speaker 1: liver through this complex multi step process. Involving eight different
Speaker 1: key enzymes, and as this process moves along the body,
Speaker 1: the body creates these intermediate compounds known as HEM precursors,
Speaker 1: which eventually, in the end of the process become heame.
Speaker 1: But if there is a problem with the production process,
Speaker 1: something gets jammed up along the chemical assembly line. There say,
Speaker 1: if one of the eight key enzymes is deficient, you
Speaker 1: don't have enough of it to make the heam you need.
Speaker 1: The body can end up failing to make HEM, and
Speaker 1: instead it will be stuck with excess unfinished precursors, sort
Speaker 1: of useless porphyrions that can be harmful in excess in
Speaker 1: the body. Imagine a you know, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: car assembly line, and it can't make the car every time. Instead,
Speaker 1: you end up with these half assembled cars, cramming up
Speaker 1: the warehouse and getting in the way. I will say,
Speaker 1: no matter what, UM, I just want to I want
Speaker 1: to hear vampire dialogue talking about HEM. I want to
Speaker 1: hear it as the sling for blood, where they're talking
Speaker 1: about gotta get that heme, need to give me some
Speaker 1: of that heme, where's the hem at? I bet somebody
Speaker 1: has done that. I hope so. But anyway, So what
Speaker 1: happens in in the porphyria conditions is that there's a
Speaker 1: build up of these porphyrions in the blood, the liver,
Speaker 1: other tissues, and this can result in the symptoms of porphyrias.
Speaker 1: Now there, as I mentioned, there was some serious expert
Speaker 1: pushback against the dolphin hypothesis. One very succinct, good, short
Speaker 1: little paper I wanted to quote on this um is
Speaker 1: called Porphyria and vampiresm Another myth in the making by
Speaker 1: An M. Cox from the Postgraduate Medical Journal uh and
Speaker 1: so Cox talks about how in the eighteenth century in
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe and a lot of a lot of the
Speaker 1: vampire legend, we talk about the folkloric vampire stuff, a
Speaker 1: lot of it is like eighteenth nineteen century Eastern Europe,
Speaker 1: that that is like ground zero for vampire belief right.
Speaker 1: And and it's definitely this is the time period in
Speaker 1: the particular strains of the folklore that have had the
Speaker 1: greatest influence on Western and ultimately global ideas of the vampire.
Speaker 1: Not to discount some of the the excellent strains of
Speaker 1: the Eastern vampire that have made their way into say
Speaker 1: Hong Kong cinema and the Japanese cinema. Yeah, like the
Speaker 1: hopping vampires of China and stuff. Sadly, I don't think
Speaker 1: any of our discussions today look for like hopping as
Speaker 1: a symptom that we're gonna have to We're gonna have
Speaker 1: to come back to that future installment of Vampire Clinic. Well,
Speaker 1: those are great vampires, but yeah, so I think we're
Speaker 1: talking more about the versions that are inspired by these
Speaker 1: sort of diseased Eastern European vampires. Where As she says,
Speaker 1: the belief in vampires was absolutely rampant. She says, quote
Speaker 1: so prevalent was the belief in the existence of a
Speaker 1: literal vampire. That the Austrians are occupying Serbia in the
Speaker 1: seventeen thirties dispatched a team of medical officers to a
Speaker 1: Serbian town to investigate the weekly exhumations and killing of
Speaker 1: the dead weekly. So basically just bands of just obsessed
Speaker 1: um Europeans going around just digging up the graves, searching
Speaker 1: for evidence of that vampire and then pulverizing the corps
Speaker 1: as necessary. I remember there being one account, um, and
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I don't have citation for this, uh, but
Speaker 1: I remember reading this one alleged treatment of the vampire
Speaker 1: case where they dug up the grave of a of
Speaker 1: a body of a suspected vampire and they made the
Speaker 1: body into paste, which everyone then ate on crackers. Wow,
Speaker 1: I've never heard that one. Yeah, I have to look
Speaker 1: that one up again and see if there's a to
Speaker 1: what degree there's any validity to that. You know. That's
Speaker 1: the thing about so many of these these folk tales
Speaker 1: and uh and uh alleged vampire traditions. Well, I think
Speaker 1: about a very common thing is of course decapitating the corps,
Speaker 1: separating the head from the body. There's earning involved, burning
Speaker 1: parts of the body, burning the whole body. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: things you can do to the bones. There's a running
Speaker 1: an iron rod through it, there's putting a steak in it.
Speaker 1: That one of the ones I really think of the
Speaker 1: just sticks in my mind is I believe it's I'm
Speaker 1: sorry if I'm wrong about this. I believe it was
Speaker 1: from Venice where they found a body with a brick
Speaker 1: shoved and it's that one. But anyway back to this paper,
Speaker 1: so so Cox says, at the time of her writing,
Speaker 1: the idea of vamporism being inspired by Porphyria, had become
Speaker 1: deeply embedded in popular consciousness, like this idea had really
Speaker 1: caught on. And she traces this idea back to this
Speaker 1: nineteen New York Times article and Dr Dolphin, Uh with
Speaker 1: the one that I was just talking about. And so
Speaker 1: Cox examines the idea what what if porphyria did inspire vamporism?
Speaker 1: She says, the main type of porphyria disease that could
Speaker 1: be applied to the situation is congenital erythropoietic porphyria, and
Speaker 1: she lists some facts about this type of porphyria. One
Speaker 1: is that at the time time of this publication, it
Speaker 1: was so rare that only about two hundred cases had
Speaker 1: ever been diagnosed. It's inherited, It first manifests in early childhood,
Speaker 1: and it leaves carriers with extreme sensitivity to the sun,
Speaker 1: so much that the skin can blister on exposure to
Speaker 1: sunlight and uh. And so this is the part where
Speaker 1: where dolphins hypothesis had some validity to it. There's the
Speaker 1: idea that that exposure to the sun could be extremely
Speaker 1: injurious and uh. And also people suffering from this disease
Speaker 1: can benefit from blood transfusions. UH. So here was dolphins
Speaker 1: points sensitive to sunlight and they need blood. But then
Speaker 1: there are some major problems with this picture of the
Speaker 1: porphyry of vampire number one. Cox actually says sensitivity to
Speaker 1: sunlight is not a universal part of traditional folk vampire beliefs.
Speaker 1: It shows up sometimes, but she cites how in nineteenth
Speaker 1: century Europe there are all these reported sightings of vampires
Speaker 1: in the daytime. Furthermore, and this is maybe the most
Speaker 1: important part, people with the throw poetic porphyria do not
Speaker 1: cray of blood and cannot benefit from drinking it, uh coxwrites,
Speaker 1: quote the enzyme hamatan necessary to alleviate the symptoms is
Speaker 1: not absorbed intact on oral ingestion, and drinking blood would
Speaker 1: have no beneficial effect for the sufferer. So, like other
Speaker 1: than sensitivity to to sunlight, the biggest part of dolphins
Speaker 1: hypothesis is that what they would maybe need to drink
Speaker 1: blood in order to treat their symptoms, but that wouldn't work. Now,
Speaker 1: it sounds like they would need to inject the blood,
Speaker 1: which a they probably they almost certainly did not have
Speaker 1: the equipment to do, and it wouldn't know to do,
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't know to do, and but then also
Speaker 1: would be extremely disastrous to even attempt without knowledge of
Speaker 1: of blood types. Yeah, and and sterilization. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's crazy. Uh. But also, she says, the fact
Speaker 1: that vampire reports and beliefs were absolutely rampant in say,
Speaker 1: eighteenth century Eastern Europe. She can is that example, you know,
Speaker 1: they're all over the place. It's inconsistent with how erythropoietic
Speaker 1: porphyria is an extremely rare version of an already rare
Speaker 1: congenital disease. Right, and it certainly this is a case
Speaker 1: where you're you're inclined to say it looked dolphin, pull
Speaker 1: back a little on it. And and because I could
Speaker 1: conceivably see, you know, it's like, okay, it's super rare.
Speaker 1: One person had it once, and then it was popularized
Speaker 1: and it became part of a general moral panic. Why,
Speaker 1: you know, a widespread panic regarding the possibility of vampiresm
Speaker 1: But yeah, when you start really digging in your heels
Speaker 1: and saying this is the model, this is the explanation,
Speaker 1: this is patient zero for vampireism. Uh, then you start
Speaker 1: getting into trouble. I think, Yeah, I agree. She mentions how,
Speaker 1: despite all of this stuff that she's just explained, the
Speaker 1: Learning Channel recently ran a program on vampires featuring Dr
Speaker 1: Dolphin and pumping the porphyria hypothesis. Wait, wait, what's the
Speaker 1: learning channel? The learning channel? It's channel on TV. Oh yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: but I think some of our listeners might not be
Speaker 1: aware that this is what TLC used to be, the
Speaker 1: Learning Channel. There was a time when TLC stood for something,
Speaker 1: and it was the Learning Channel. What does it stand
Speaker 1: for now? Nothing? It's just letters. It's like KFC. I no, no,
Speaker 1: that does not have anything to do with the state
Speaker 1: or with a bird with a cooking method. Is just
Speaker 1: some letters, you know. I like some letters better than others.
Speaker 1: KFC are good ones. One more thing I do want
Speaker 1: to mention here, and I think we should also just
Speaker 1: mention this is a a general note about our episode.
Speaker 1: I read another paper from Nine Perspectives in Biology and
Speaker 1: Medicine by Mary Winkler and Carl Anderson called Vampires, Porphyria
Speaker 1: and the media Medicalization of a myth, And essentially the
Speaker 1: authors here take strong exception to the linking of the
Speaker 1: vampire legend with porphyria diseases. Uh and they said this
Speaker 1: this link resembled rumormongering more than science. It had never
Speaker 1: even been formally presented in a scientific journal. It was
Speaker 1: just sort of like some scientist with a funny idea
Speaker 1: talking to the media and then the media running with
Speaker 1: it in an irresponsible way. But they mentioned, you know this,
Speaker 1: this kind of thing could also be damaging to the
Speaker 1: actual image of these diseases, and two people who hold
Speaker 1: them like they quote a guy who had read who
Speaker 1: had a porphyria condition, who had read stuff like this
Speaker 1: and had said, like, wait, does this mean I'm descended
Speaker 1: from vampires? Now? And I think that's that should just
Speaker 1: remind us, like, well, this is a super interesting question
Speaker 1: to try to say, like, is this vampire legend rooted
Speaker 1: in actual medical conditions? We should remember not to be
Speaker 1: insensitive about the medical conditions real people have these, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's good not to characterize these people as vampires,
Speaker 1: recognize them as people with medical conditions. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: if you were to pinpoint any cinematic vampires, TV vampires,
Speaker 1: etcetera that the kind of line up with this disease,
Speaker 1: which ones would you pick? I guess I'll have to
Speaker 1: come back to that. I don't know which one this
Speaker 1: would line up with, but I will say, in general,
Speaker 1: my verdict on Porphyria as the the explanation for the
Speaker 1: vampire lore. Thumbs down. I don't think this one carries
Speaker 1: much weight at all conditions. Rare would not actually result
Speaker 1: in drinking blood. About the only thing it has going
Speaker 1: for it is the association with sensitivity to sunlight, which
Speaker 1: is not even a universal part of the myth. Al Right, well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we will continue to diagnose
Speaker 1: our vampires. Than all right, we're back, so, Robert. One
Speaker 1: thing that I often think about with the vampire lore
Speaker 1: is the vampires traditional association with the children of the night,
Speaker 1: that the creatures of the forest, with wild beasts like
Speaker 1: wolves and bats. Yeah, and just the overall ba steal
Speaker 1: nature of the vampire. Um. This, this film has its
Speaker 1: problems for sure. But brom Stoker's Dracula, which is really
Speaker 1: Francis Ford Copula's Dracula, What problems are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Because I can't think of any Oh, I guess I. I
Speaker 1: I still hold a grudge against it based on kind
Speaker 1: of a nitpicking, uh fact, and that is that when
Speaker 1: quote unquote brom Stoker's Dracula came out, there was a
Speaker 1: cool movie branded copy of brom Stoker's Dracula you could
Speaker 1: buy at the bookstore. But then also there was a
Speaker 1: novelization of the film, No, Yes, No, which was I get.
Speaker 1: I can't remember what they called it. I guess it
Speaker 1: was like Francis Ford Coppola's bron Stoker's Dracula. Did the
Speaker 1: did the author of this novelization slip and stop calling
Speaker 1: him Count Dracula and just start calling him Gary Oldman?
Speaker 1: I never read it, but I remember seeing it on
Speaker 1: the bookshelves when that film came out, and it made
Speaker 1: me mad. I was like, no, if, if, if you
Speaker 1: have to do a novelization of this film, then it
Speaker 1: is not bron Stoker's Dracula, Because if it were rom
Speaker 1: Stoker's Dracula, then the original book is the novelization of
Speaker 1: the film. What's going on? That is a perversion of
Speaker 1: our modern times? Because because brom Stoker's Dracula, it's a
Speaker 1: great book. It's a very readable book, food for modern audiences.
Speaker 1: You know. I wouldn't put it on the same level
Speaker 1: as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but it is. It's a great book,
Speaker 1: very readable. There was there was no need. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that that somebody got a novelization job out
Speaker 1: of it, but uh, it just seemed kind of plumosus
Speaker 1: that being said, a fabulously fun film. That's that shows
Speaker 1: us a number of different ideas of what the vampire
Speaker 1: could be. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that movie
Speaker 1: is great because it it just embraces the fact that
Speaker 1: the story is bonkers and it asks us essentially to
Speaker 1: side with the Count and not with the human heroes
Speaker 1: who are fighting him. I love how Anthony Hopkins says
Speaker 1: Van Helsing is just out of his mind and running
Speaker 1: around like beheading she vampires left and right. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a great line. One of my favorite parts of it
Speaker 1: is they they're talking about after he beheads Lucy Western,
Speaker 1: who you know, has turned into a vampire queen who
Speaker 1: has turned into a vampire bride. You know he Uh,
Speaker 1: They're like, was she in pain? And he says something like, yes,
Speaker 1: she was in great pain, but then I cut off
Speaker 1: our head and drove a stake through hard and burned
Speaker 1: it and then she found peace. Well, when Anthony Hopkins
Speaker 1: that lives the line, you know you're more invested. But
Speaker 1: roll through real quick. The various versions of the vampire
Speaker 1: the Gary Oldman takes in this film. Oh, let's see. Well,
Speaker 1: he's definitely at some point I think a bat and
Speaker 1: then like a big bat creature. It's almost like a
Speaker 1: dog bat hybrid. At some point he's some kind of
Speaker 1: bipedal wolf thing like werewolf. Yetie kind of creature. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's at another point he's just it seems just like
Speaker 1: a straightforward wolf for fox or something quadrupedal canid. Are
Speaker 1: there other ones? Well, you could certainly those are the
Speaker 1: more be steal forms. And then of course he also
Speaker 1: takes the form of a extremely creepy old man with
Speaker 1: with fabulous hair and gray hair. That hair, that's that's
Speaker 1: what the movie is all about, is the Gary Oldman bun. Yes,
Speaker 1: And then of course there's the young Gary Oldman, the
Speaker 1: sexy vampire. So so it's it's it's interesting that it
Speaker 1: manages to encompass all of these different versions of what
Speaker 1: a vampire could be, but it certainly hits that animal.
Speaker 1: Note that idea of the vampire is this bloodthirsty beast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I like that it actually does include that, and
Speaker 1: it puts it alongside him being a smooth, suave sunglasses
Speaker 1: top hat wearing dandy about town in London. I also
Speaker 1: love his armor in that film. I'm I'm forgetting the
Speaker 1: historical lad vampire that we get the muscles. There's it's
Speaker 1: so rich, there's so much good stuff. But you're right, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does emphasize the be steel aspects. He turns into
Speaker 1: animals in the movie. And this leads us to our
Speaker 1: next disease. In our discussion here, as we inevitably try
Speaker 1: to diagnose the vampire that's brought into our clinic, that
Speaker 1: it snarling and biting and lunging at all of our
Speaker 1: the other patients and doctors. Uh, this brings us to
Speaker 1: rabies right now. It's it's easy to discount the horror
Speaker 1: of rabies, especially you know in our modern world. Uh
Speaker 1: Luis Pasteur devised preventative vaccine back in five and if
Speaker 1: treated early, the disease is one pcent treatable. But rabies
Speaker 1: is an old enemy. References to the disease date back
Speaker 1: more than four thousand years to the ancient Mesopotamians. They're
Speaker 1: very dawn of recorded history. So it's it's been with
Speaker 1: us a while. Supplet's break down what it does. Rabies
Speaker 1: is a viral disease that attack the central nervous system.
Speaker 1: The virus centers the body, has the spinal column, and
Speaker 1: heads straight to the brain for replication and destruction. And
Speaker 1: it's just distressing enough to see the ravages of rabies
Speaker 1: in an animal, but in humans it's it's it's even
Speaker 1: more horrific. Uh. There are several different strains of rabies,
Speaker 1: but we can break the virus down into two main types.
Speaker 1: On one hand, there's a paralytic rabies and this is
Speaker 1: typified by a weariness and a lethargy. But then encephalytic
Speaker 1: rabies is more common, and this is where we see
Speaker 1: foaming at the mouth. Uh, we see increased agitation, aggression, disorientation, hallucinations,
Speaker 1: whatever the strain, though, it all culminates in paralysis and death.
Speaker 1: So I mean I could basically stop there, and I
Speaker 1: think everyone would see how this lines up with various
Speaker 1: interpretations of the vampire, right you. I mean, you're talking
Speaker 1: about a virus that attacks the nervous system and causes
Speaker 1: erratic behavior. And whenever we think of erratic behavior, we think, okay, well,
Speaker 1: maybe that could cause people who didn't understand what was
Speaker 1: going on to think this person is turning into a monster, right,
Speaker 1: and then towards the end they're incapacitated and kind of
Speaker 1: in the state of of of of of living death. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But then again, you about how every virus. You know,
Speaker 1: diseases need a route of transmission, and very often diseases
Speaker 1: are evolutionarily smart. Like a disease that is spread by
Speaker 1: aerosolized droplets in the air tends to make people cough
Speaker 1: and sneeze, you know, the disease makes you coughin sneeze
Speaker 1: so it can get to other carriers. And the rabies
Speaker 1: virus is an ingenious hijacker in this regard because once
Speaker 1: it takes over a host, it needs to spread. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a genetic mission, and in order to fulfill
Speaker 1: this mission, it generates the symptoms of that that mad
Speaker 1: dog rage and the foaming mouth because guess what's in
Speaker 1: that saliva. Guess what's in that foam. That's where the
Speaker 1: rabies is ready to spread to the next animal or
Speaker 1: human via a b steal bite. And what's more, the
Speaker 1: virus instills a strong aversion to water in its victim
Speaker 1: animal or human to ensure this frothy mouthful of doom
Speaker 1: doesn't get washed away. Oh yeah, this is where the hydrophobia.
Speaker 1: Like if you ever read is an old yeller where
Speaker 1: they talk about rabies and they call it hydrophobia. I
Speaker 1: only remember one moment and all the other and uh,
Speaker 1: and I think everyone knows which moment that is. Well,
Speaker 1: I think you know you read the older sources and
Speaker 1: they call rabies hydrophobia. And I think this is because it, uh,
Speaker 1: it tends to cause like difficulty swallowing that makes people
Speaker 1: not able or want to drink water. Uh. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: this came up in a Basilisk episode as well. So
Speaker 1: just a health note if if you're ever bitten by
Speaker 1: a wild animal, especially a bat, uh, seek medical attention
Speaker 1: as soon as possible, because while again it is treatable
Speaker 1: in its early stages, rabies is almost completely fatal in
Speaker 1: the long term. Um, so you have left untreated, it
Speaker 1: is almost certainly a death sentence. So seek care early. Yes,
Speaker 1: so it makes sense that we might create monsters out
Speaker 1: of rabies, out of observing cases of rabies, right, and
Speaker 1: the idea that there might be a vampire connection. Uh,
Speaker 1: this has been explored in the literature as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: The hypothesis goes back. I would say, at least as
Speaker 1: far as two the work of Gomez Alonso and J. Robbia.
Speaker 1: Um and I'll get to one of Gomez Alonso's papers
Speaker 1: in a bed here. But yeah, a lot of people
Speaker 1: have chimed in on this, so like the rabies vampire
Speaker 1: connection is seemingly pretty strong. Yeah, I read it mentioned
Speaker 1: back in uh just a letter from nineteen ninety two
Speaker 1: and the Animals of Internal Medicine by a I believe
Speaker 1: a Dutch doctor named Alex Hike who wrote a letter
Speaker 1: just about the ties between the possible ties between vampires
Speaker 1: and rabies. And he writes, quote, although we may still
Speaker 1: be fascinated by the vampire legend, we all now know
Speaker 1: that the human vampire never really existed or did he
Speaker 1: bump bump. A bite from an irrationally aggressive animal leads
Speaker 1: to aggressively psychotic behavior in the human victim. Doesn't it
Speaker 1: sound like rabies? In the agony of rabies, all affected
Speaker 1: mammals may display such a hyper excitable phase. Even otherwise
Speaker 1: placid insectivorous bats have been reported to attack humans and
Speaker 1: other mammals. Human rabies, a hyper excitable psychotic phase is
Speaker 1: also seen, although genuine biting behavior has rarely been reported. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he mentions a paper by a doctor named lint Yourn,
Speaker 1: which is case Studies of Rabies. That quote mentions a
Speaker 1: fifteen year old rabid boy who bit off one of
Speaker 1: his mother's fingertips. So it sounds like in human rabies infections,
Speaker 1: biting is not a universal characteristic, but it can happen.
Speaker 1: And again, it would only really have to happen once
Speaker 1: for the story to really begin to generate. Right. So
Speaker 1: I was looking at one of these papers by a
Speaker 1: Juan Gomez Alonzo, MD, who wrote about it in Rabies
Speaker 1: A Possible Explanation for the Vampire legend published in the
Speaker 1: journal Historical Neurology from in which the author looks at
Speaker 1: the hypothesis. So he starts off in this paper by
Speaker 1: pointing out that, yes, in vampire legends of European folklore,
Speaker 1: you often see dogs and other easts wrapped up in
Speaker 1: the whole scenario. The vampire could take the form of
Speaker 1: a beast, and in the form of a dog, it
Speaker 1: could kill all the dogs of a village. And it's
Speaker 1: also also maybe associated with wolves or cats, etcetera. I
Speaker 1: don't know if there's any real connection here, but I
Speaker 1: mean It makes me think about the way that animals
Speaker 1: like cats especially are also associated with witchcraft. If you're
Speaker 1: giving a kind of Christian demonology take on the vampire legend,
Speaker 1: like you know which cats were often thought to be
Speaker 1: the familiars of witches. Now in this paper, he he
Speaker 1: also prizes a nice, uh overall sided look at some
Speaker 1: of the frequent attributes of vamps. Some of these we've
Speaker 1: already discussed, like the idea that they're mostly nocturnal. I
Speaker 1: love this, uh that you could become a vampire by
Speaker 1: being attacked by a vamp, eating the flesh of animals
Speaker 1: killed by vamps quote, having been a great lover unquote,
Speaker 1: or having died of plague, rabies, or other illnesses. Also,
Speaker 1: if a corpse saw its own reflection in a mirror,
Speaker 1: it could go a vamp. Uh what Yeah, how would
Speaker 1: the corpse see the reflection? Just don't hold any mirrors
Speaker 1: up to corpses, then you don't risk it at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah uh yeah. This course ties into the whole supernatural
Speaker 1: aspect of mirrors and the fact that most people really
Speaker 1: don't understand how mirrors work. But but that's another another
Speaker 1: topic for another episode. Um. Also, animals walking over a
Speaker 1: grave could also do the trick. Yeah, he writes. Quote.
Speaker 1: Signs that made a cadaver suspicious included good external appearance,
Speaker 1: a swollen body full of liquid blood that flowed out
Speaker 1: of the mouth, prominent genitalia, and the emission of a
Speaker 1: cry when a steak was driven into it. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: a little confused by that last one. The emission of
Speaker 1: the cry. Well, there are this one's easily explained though.
Speaker 1: I mean the idea, if you're you're exhuming a body, uh,
Speaker 1: and it is say, bloated with various gases due to decomposition,
Speaker 1: if you press on it or certainly drive a steak
Speaker 1: into its heart, uh, some sort of sound might emerge.
Speaker 1: It's kind of sound like a sigh potentially, or like
Speaker 1: a sort of a grotesque um like necro mouth fart
Speaker 1: kind of a situation. I don't know. Um. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean this is another thing that has been considered a
Speaker 1: very important part of the formation of vampire legends, which
Speaker 1: is the counterintuitive appearance of exhumed corpses. That sometimes you
Speaker 1: would dig up a body and people would look at
Speaker 1: it and think, that doesn't look like I would expect
Speaker 1: a decomposing body to look instead something about it looks
Speaker 1: like it's you know, recently been alive or doing stuff
Speaker 1: like it might have blood running from the mouth, or
Speaker 1: it might somehow look healthy and bloated in the face,
Speaker 1: like it's been gorging. Yeah, I mean the bloating of
Speaker 1: corpses alone, you think of that. And I did not
Speaker 1: encourage anyone to look up images of bloated corpses. But
Speaker 1: if you do, uh, you will be astounded at how
Speaker 1: bloated things can get. And I could see where one
Speaker 1: might think, oh, well, this is this is an absurdly
Speaker 1: bloated version of this individual we used to see around town.
Speaker 1: How do they get so bloated? Perhaps they have been
Speaker 1: eating something, perhaps they have been drinking something. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: sort of the full logic you would apply to seeing
Speaker 1: a corpse look like this. Another thing about the corpses
Speaker 1: that's been observed is the idea that um during postmortem decomposition,
Speaker 1: sometimes skin will pull back away from things like fingernails
Speaker 1: and teeth, you know, the surrounding tissue will draw back,
Speaker 1: giving the appearance that things like fingernails and teeth have
Speaker 1: grown longer in the grave. And so a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff like this just ways that a corpse doesn't look
Speaker 1: like a person would naively assume it should look after
Speaker 1: it's been exhumed. That probably played a large role in
Speaker 1: contributing to the vampire legend. And and then if you
Speaker 1: get to the point where you're you're exhuming corpses to
Speaker 1: look for signs of supernatural on life, I mean, you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna find it. There's a sunk cost and digging
Speaker 1: up that grave. Some of the papers we've been reading
Speaker 1: for this episode point out, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things about the vampire records of vampire control activities is
Speaker 1: that pretty much anytime people dug up a corpse to
Speaker 1: find a vampire, it turns out, yep, it was a vampire. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe the stories of oh it's a negative,
Speaker 1: sorry everybody, we can just go home, let's bury this
Speaker 1: thing again, those don't make it into the newspaper now.
Speaker 1: In this paper, Gomez Alonso also discusses the seeming link
Speaker 1: between vampire behavior and limbic system disorders. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: this brutish part of the brain plays the central role
Speaker 1: in the regulation of emotion and behavior in patients with
Speaker 1: diseases such as rabies and epilepsy. A clear link has
Speaker 1: been found between aggressiveness and the dysfunction of some limbic
Speaker 1: system regions, i e. The hypothalamus, the amygdaloid complex, the heppocampus. Likewise,
Speaker 1: relation between has been shown in humans between altered sexual
Speaker 1: behavior and some olymbic system structures such as the septal area.
Speaker 1: Nocturnal activity may be present in patients with insomnia or
Speaker 1: disruption of the sleep wake cycle. Both have been reported
Speaker 1: in disorders of the anterior hypothalamus. So he is showing
Speaker 1: that there could be some clear behavioral links between things
Speaker 1: you might expect to see in a person who's suffering
Speaker 1: the neurodegenerative effects of rabies and things that appear in
Speaker 1: the vampire lore exactly. And of course, obviously we have
Speaker 1: this animal interaction situation in vamp Empire, some vampire legends,
Speaker 1: which gives us a link to zoonosis and and rabies
Speaker 1: is a disease that best fits so symptoms that it
Speaker 1: is transferred by animals and then can be transferred from
Speaker 1: human to human via kind of animalistic attacks in some cases.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the rabid human may froth of the mouth,
Speaker 1: their facial muscles may twitch and reveal their teeth. And
Speaker 1: these episodes may be triggered, he says, by changes in
Speaker 1: the air uh, in the in water, or in even light,
Speaker 1: like walking out into say bright sunlight. And then they
Speaker 1: may act that the individual with rabies may act with
Speaker 1: furious aggression towards other humans. Meanwhile, during quiet intervals, they
Speaker 1: may lie in bed mentally alert, but with the work
Speaker 1: of a look of like frozen horror, perhaps drooling bloody
Speaker 1: saliva from their mouths. Uh. Nightmares and hallucinations may emerge
Speaker 1: during this phase as well, which certainly can add to
Speaker 1: this sense of horror. Uh. And again, this is a
Speaker 1: phase that we thankfully see very little of in this
Speaker 1: day and age, due to early rabies intervention in human patients.
Speaker 1: I mean, generally speaking, I think we've gotten to the
Speaker 1: point in most places where if someone has been bitten
Speaker 1: by a wild animal, or even if you've been bitten
Speaker 1: by a pet like a child as bit by a
Speaker 1: pet dog. I belong to enough neighborhood groups on Facebook
Speaker 1: that you see that that is is instantly a panic moment.
Speaker 1: Because we have been we've kind of rehearsed this, you know, like,
Speaker 1: what if there's there is a what if the animal
Speaker 1: is at all rabbid like this has to be taken
Speaker 1: care of in advance. Yeah, and I know. I mean,
Speaker 1: one thing I've read about is that there definitely is
Speaker 1: more of a rabies threat in say, more developing parts
Speaker 1: of the world, where a lot of times it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily come from like you know, the wild wolf for
Speaker 1: something that comes from animals like straight dogs. In addition
Speaker 1: to to this behavior though it's also a hyper sexual
Speaker 1: activity has been observed prolonged directions. Um, the author says,
Speaker 1: quote the literature reports cases of rabid patients who practiced
Speaker 1: intercourse up to twenty times a day and who made
Speaker 1: violent rape attempts. So the connection between animals is clear here.
Speaker 1: And and the connection between not only human and animal behavior,
Speaker 1: but but between like normal human behavior and like animalistic
Speaker 1: savage models of how humans could behave And he says
Speaker 1: it's also worth noting that while the bide is the
Speaker 1: main way rabies is transmitted, he says, there are accounts
Speaker 1: in the literature of sexual transmission as well. Um, and
Speaker 1: this with time that you mentioned earlier idea that some
Speaker 1: of the vampire folklore has uh highlights I don't know,
Speaker 1: questionable sexual activity or what they would have considered questionable
Speaker 1: sexual activity. Yeah. Yeah, And then he also mentions that,
Speaker 1: you know, biting is not necessarily I mean, biden could
Speaker 1: be part of sexual activity as well. I mean there
Speaker 1: are Sexual activity is kind of a big tent that
Speaker 1: contains a lot of different things and contain and can
Speaker 1: also encompass a number of different bodily fluids, which could
Speaker 1: contain the rabies, sort of a carnival of disease vectors. Yes, now,
Speaker 1: rabies is also this is interesting, seven times more likely
Speaker 1: in males than in females, he tells us, thus lining
Speaker 1: up with the frequent masculine vampire trope. Especially that was
Speaker 1: he says, was president during that time. Also worth noting,
Speaker 1: he says that in the eighteen hundreds, UH there were
Speaker 1: there was a fairly large rabies epidemic among animals in
Speaker 1: places like Hungary. Rabid animals typically die within two weeks
Speaker 1: by his fit sea or cardio respiratory arrest, and modes
Speaker 1: of death UH in this case may produce a persistence
Speaker 1: of liquid blood, turgent genitalia, and the emission of sperm. UH.
Speaker 1: Though he also notes though that when wild animals UH
Speaker 1: presented these symptoms or certainly of the human exhibited these
Speaker 1: these symptoms, it was probably more likely that they would
Speaker 1: be killed before they reached this point, especially if there's
Speaker 1: a pervasive vampire myth in in the area. One can
Speaker 1: only imagine uh. And he also argues that you know
Speaker 1: this is likely. There's likely a connection between rabies and
Speaker 1: many Greek myths uh and the werewolf legend as well.
Speaker 1: All right, so, Robert, do you have a verdict on
Speaker 1: the validity of this and explaining the inspiration of vampire lore.
Speaker 1: I think we've said so far that syphilis might be
Speaker 1: a good candidate for explaining some cases, especially maybe some
Speaker 1: more modern cases. We think that porphyria is not a
Speaker 1: good explanation of vampire of the origin of vampire lore.
Speaker 1: What do think about rabies? Well, I think that this
Speaker 1: the overall fear that I mean, the fear of our
Speaker 1: b steal nature, the fear of behaving like an animal,
Speaker 1: of giving ourselves over entirely to violent or carnal impulses.
Speaker 1: That that is a that's a fear that will never
Speaker 1: go away, and it's just part of our human nature.
Speaker 1: And in this case, we do have a medical condition
Speaker 1: that that lines up with that fear. So well, uh So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sold on the idea that if they were
Speaker 1: just even notable cases of human rabies, much less an epidemic,
Speaker 1: it could definitely have uh it could send shock waves
Speaker 1: through the folklore traditions of a given region. But then again,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm hesitant to I'm not only hesitant, I mean
Speaker 1: I'm opposed to saying vampire vampire is m equals rabies.
Speaker 1: I think that that would be going a little too far.
Speaker 1: But they do line up in interesting ways. We've tried
Speaker 1: to emphasize several times. I think that we're not going
Speaker 1: to push a vamporism equals some disease or some condition. Here.
Speaker 1: We we know that the inspiration behind folklore and and
Speaker 1: belief in mythical beasts and stuff is number one, more
Speaker 1: complex than that. Number two, it's influenced by pure creative imagination.
Speaker 1: Number three, The connections we make with known medical diseases
Speaker 1: today are all it's all just inferences. You know, we
Speaker 1: we don't know for sure what was going on then,
Speaker 1: what caused it? Yeah, I will say if you if
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about rabies, you should check
Speaker 1: out I honestly can't remember remember it was a radio
Speaker 1: Lab or This American Life. I think it was Radio Lab.
Speaker 1: They did an episode on rabies and it includes audio
Speaker 1: recordings or a snippet of an audio recording of a
Speaker 1: human rabies case. And you hear this, this like the
Speaker 1: guttural howling of the individual. Uh so listen to that.
Speaker 1: It'll it'll haunt you for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: And if you think you have rabies exposure, by all means,
Speaker 1: get to a hospital immediately. Absolutely. All right, Well, I
Speaker 1: think we have to call it there for today, but
Speaker 1: join us again next time for part two of our
Speaker 1: two part exploration of the link between medical conditions and
Speaker 1: the origins of the vampire legend. That's right, the clinic
Speaker 1: is gonna close for a day, but then it's gonna
Speaker 1: reopen on Thursday and we will will explore even more
Speaker 1: on this topic. We we figured this one would be
Speaker 1: a natural episode displute into because I think everybody's down
Speaker 1: for vampires during the month of October, and there's just
Speaker 1: a lot to talk about here. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you want to check out more episodes of stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind, especially are our seasonal offerings that occur
Speaker 1: every October, head on over to stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where you'll find
Speaker 1: all the episodes of the show. You'll find links out
Speaker 1: to our various social media accounts. You'll find a tab
Speaker 1: at the top of the page for our store. Visit
Speaker 1: our store and you can pick up some cool swags,
Speaker 1: some T shirts, some stickers, coffee mugs, throw pillows, framed
Speaker 1: are you name it, it's available there. It's a great
Speaker 1: way to support the show. And if you want to
Speaker 1: support us in a way that doesn't cost you any
Speaker 1: money at all, why I simply go and rate and
Speaker 1: review us wherever you have the power to do so.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Alex
Speaker 1: Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us directly to let us know feedback
Speaker 1: about this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hi, let us know
Speaker 1: how you found out about the show, where you listen from,
Speaker 1: how long you've been listening all that fun stuff. You
Speaker 1: can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. B
Speaker 1: one