For the past few years, books, television, and movies have been filled with vampires (and werewolves). Sexy, attractive, and misunderstood, the modern renditions of vampires have captured the imaginations of millions of fans. But myths of more terrifying versions of these predators are found in some form in almost every culture on Earth and go back thousands of years.
Some attribute the rise of vampire legends to ancient Egypt, in the form of ghouls or demons brought from the netherworld by sorcerers. People today are most familiar with the European version of the vampire, thought by some to have originated with Bram Stoker’s book, “Dracula,” loosely modeled on Romania’s 15th century Prince Vlad Tepes, (a.k.a. Vlad the Impaler). However, ancient Greece, India, China, Arabia, and many other cultures all have their own legends of vampires. In some places, these blood-drinking monsters were believed to be revenants, or in popular terminology: undead. Most educated people will tell you that vampires don’t exist, that they’re only stories. How, then, do we explain the cultural pervasiveness of the tales?
Hippocrates is cited by some as the first to recognize the symptoms of the disease now known as “porphyria”, but it was not identified as being associated with the porphyrin pigments in the blood until pioneering German biochemist Felix Hoppe-Seyer did so in 1871. The name “porphyria” (from the Greek “porphyrus” or purple) is attributed to Dr. B.J. Stokvis, who described the clinical syndrome in 1889.
Many forms of the disease exist, but all stem from faults in the human body’s production of hemes, which carry oxygen in our blood. Porphyrins are precursors to the process of making hemes, such as hemoglobin. But in some people, their bodies have a deficiency (sometimes inherited and sometimes acquired) of the enzymes needed to transform the porphyrins, leading to a toxic buildup of the substances in their blood. Symptoms may include trances, seizures, hallucinations, coma, and photosensitivity, an extreme reaction to light. Tales of destroying vampires by exposing them to light might well have derived from this aspect of the disease, which causes chronic blistering and burns from the touch of the sun on their skin. Sufferers of this form of the disease often are able to only go out at night.
Imagine an innocent person who has fallen into a coma and is presumed to be dead. They awaken alone, perhaps already enshrouded. Open sores and skin erosion would have loaned themselves to the impression of something that has risen from the grave. Some forms of the disease cause even those inflicted to become extremely hirsute (really hairy), especially around the face (the origin of werewolves perhaps??).
Superstitious people prevented suspected vampires from rising by staking them to their graves. In 2013, two ancient skeletons were found in Bulgaria with iron rods impaling their chests, believed by the archeologists who discovered them to have been people accused of vampirism. Another body, found in a mass grave in Venice, Italy, had a brick shoved into its mouth. A common folk belief from the time period was that vampires could chew their way out of their shrouds to seek victims. Decapitating them and filling their mouths with garlic or a brick were thought to prevent this.
There is no cure for the rare disease, but in many cases, some relief from symptoms of porphyria can be attained by blood or heme transfusions. The heme pigment is able to survive digestion and be absorbed from the intestines. Although there is no evidence that ingesting blood can treat porphyria, speculation exists that in ancient times, when people believed disease to be caused by imbalances in the four “humours” (yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm) and used leeches to remove blood, people might also have drunk blood to alleviate their suffering.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/born-to-the-purple-the-st/ http://www.livescience.com/24374-vampires-real-history.html http://bit.ly/1PNYqN6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_folklore_by_region https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyria https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/shakespeare/fourhumors.html http://bit.ly/207mJcl
