Medical
Explanations for Vampirism: Rabies
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The
following article is copyright 1998 to Reuters News Service, and is
from the September 21, 1998 edition of Oddly
Enough.
Could rabies explain the vampire
legend?
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Could rabies be
behind the legend of the vampire?
A Spanish neurologist, proposing a novel genesis for one of the
most feared ghouls in Western culture, says the tale of the
blood-sucking predator may have originated with a major rabies
epidemic in Europe in the 1700s.
"Sometimes things that are apparently bizarre and senseless can
have a logical explanation," said Dr. Juan Gomez-Alonso of Xeral
Hospital in Vigo, Spain. His rabid vampire thesis appears in the
issue of the journal Neurology released Monday.
Gomez-Alonso said he had always assumed vampires were fictional
creatures from Europe's superstitious past.
"Then one day I saw a classic Dracula film," he said. "I watched
the film more as a doctor than as a spectator, and I became so
impressed by some obvious similarities between vampires and what
happens in rabies, such as aggressiveness and
hypersexuality."
Gomez-Alonso said he began his research by looking into statistics
on rabies symptoms, and found that 25 percent of rabid men "have a
tendency to bite others."
He then went to the history books and found that early tales of
vampirism frequently coincided with reports of rabies outbreaks in
and around the Balkans, stretching back to a particularly
devastating epidemic of rabies in dogs, wolves and other animals in
Hungary from 1721-28.
Ticking down the characteristics most frequently associated with
vampires, Gomez-Alonso said he believed he could explain almost all
of them as symptoms of rabies.
The vampire's famous aversion to garlic and to mirrors could be
ascribed to hypersensitivity, which comes with rabies infection,
according to his theory.
"Men with rabies ... react to stimuli such as water, light, odors
or mirrors with spasms of the facial and vocal muscles that can
cause hoarse sounds, bared teeth and frothing at the mouth of
bloody fluid," he said.
In the past, he contended, "a man was not considered rabid if he
was able to stand the sight of his own image in a mirror."
The vampire's voracious sexual appetite and nocturnal habits --
depicted in movies and on television as the suave Count Dracula
appearing on a moonlit balcony -- could be attributed to the effect
of rabies on the parts of the brain that help regulate sleep cycles
and sexual behavior.
"Hypersexuality may be a striking manifestation of rabies,"
Gomez-Alonso wrote in his article, adding that "the literature
reports cases of rabid patients who practiced intercourse up to 30
times in a day."
The common association of vampires with animals such as wolves and
bats could be explained by the fact that those creatures are
susceptible to, and often the source of rabies infection, and can
exhibit the same snarling, bloody-mouthed visage as an infected
human.
"It would be imaginable that men and beasts with identical
ferocious and bizarre behavior might have been seen as similar
malign beings," Gomez-Alonso said.
He said even the vampire's fatal kiss, the bite itself, could be
traced to rabies.
"Man has a tendency to bite, both in fighting and in sexual
activities," Gomez-Alonso says. "The intensification of such
tendency by rabies increases the risk of transmission, as the virus
is in saliva and other body secretions."
* The above
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