Parallels between the effects of Leprosy and Vampirism?

Reading the more recent entries I was struck by the way Mina describes and deals with her condition resembles the way people in medieval and early modern Europe dealt with leprosy.

“Unclean” was the shout along with the sound of a certain wooden instrument of which I only know the German name, with which the afflicted had to announce themselves when out in public. This way people were able to keep their distance, but also knew, that these people were in need of donations and often received them.

When Mina describes herself as unclean she likens her condition to a disease, that not only severs her from community, but also presents a danger to community. Like a poision the illness works its way through their bodies and well in medieval logic turns them into living, and horrifically already decaying, dead.

Thankfully nowadays much can be done for a leprosy paitent (yay for penicilin!) but back in the middle ages (and much later actually) all that could be done was to sent them to leprosy colonies. The patients were first kept under quarantine, the progession of their rash, the first symptom carefully watched and if the horrible suspicion was confirmed- they were declared dead.

They literally became living dead. And in their presence the priests would read and sing the final rites for them- they recieved a full Christian burial- except they were still alive and in many cases lived fo many years to come.

But to the community they were dead. Their partners could remarry. Their family would receive their inheritance. And they were sent away, now to live away from society as a leper, among other afflicted.

In many cases the leprosy colonies were actually quite humane. They were cared for by the community, a priest would read a daily mass from behind a wall, and in my local town musem we have a 16th century apparatus much like a confessional but with glass panes, through which paitents could talk to visitors regulary- we have evidence that often actually the spouses would come to visit even while already remarried for many years.

But no matter the living conditions, being sick with leprosy meant you were technically a danger to the “living”. You carried in you the germ inside you which threatened to turn the people you loved into fellow “living dead”, and the only way you could help them was by staying away, and becoming as dead as a breathing human could, giving them at least the freedom your dead can grant since you can’t spare them the grief from it anyway.

I’m tagging @oldshrewsburyian in this because I know medieval lepers are right in her wheelhouse and I want to know what you think of this.

Ah, well! As far as it goes as a description of what happened to those with leprosy (not necessarily Hansen’s Disease) in medieval Europe, and how they were regarded, it’s almost completely wrong. The leprous were not regarded as the living dead. The alleged ceremony of burial survives in one (1) French manuscript from the 15th century. In the 15th and 16th centuries, it’s true that the mobility of the leprous was often more restricted; crucially, this was an era after plague, and also in an era of increased anxiety about labor and local civic rights… but I digress slightly. The point is: none of this is true, basically. The clappers held by the leprous were used to attract alms, not drive people away. “Colonies” for those with leprosy were an invention of the 19th century. The thing about inheritance is true for those who chose to enter hospitals, but that is because of the institutional characteristics of hospitals, not because of leprosy.

However! All of this is an accurate description of what Victorians thought happened to those with leprosy in the Middle Ages. So I think it very likely – especially given the description of the mark on Mina’s skin, and the progressive symptoms – that OP is precisely right about what Bram Stoker is trying to evoke. And especially given the active debates about care and cure for those with leprosy/Hansen’s Disease from the 1870s onwards, in the time of the bacteriological revolution, I think it can also be read as a way in which Stoker is, as elsewhere in the novel, exploring the tensions between modernity and its (imagined) medieval other.