Did Dracula Have Rabies?

[Lady Valkyrie]

I'm posting the following in reference to the folklore surrounding vampires and it has nothing to do with Real Vampires such as Sanguinarian Vampires or Psychic Vampires.

My significant other was reading author Tess Geritson's blog today and he sent me the link knowing I would be interested.

http://tessgerritsen.com/blog/2006/06/15/was-dracula-rabid/

I then started googling and found a lot of news articles on the subject. They are a bit older but I still think they are pretty interesting. Here's one in particular that really stood out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/178623.stm

[Trithemius]

When you're trying to develop a historical theory, it's best to not use fiction as your source material. And that's what it looks like the doctor is doing.

First off, this


Dr. Gomez-Alonso also notes that during the years 1721-28, a major rabies epidemic among dogs and wolves broke out in Hungary — precisely the time and place when the first vampire legends began.

is totally wrong. The earliest vampire legends I've seen from Eastern Europe date to the 1300's. And how does he account for the vampire legends of ancient Greece and Rome? Or vampire legends from ancient Ireland (5th century), Egypt, Babylonia, the Americas, or the far East?

One of the traits he mentions is hypersexuality. From everything I've ever read about vampires, there was nothing remotely sexual about the vampire of folklore. It was a walking corpse, a thing of horror and revulsion. It was not a suave, debonair, dashing caped gentleman who smoothly seduced young women in order to feed from them. That part of the legend came about when Victorian authors got hold of the stories and romanticized them in the 1800's.


The association of vampires with animals such as wolves and bats could be explained by the fact that those creatures are susceptible to the disease.


Um, Bram Stoker was the first person to associate vampires and bats.

Again, if you're going to attempt a historical theory, don't base it on fiction. It's an interesting idea, but it needs a lot of work.

[Garm]

If you spent part of your adolescence as a captive boy toy for a bunch of horny Turks you would probably come out of it with a bad attitude too

Vlad the Impaler made quite the rep for himself in his lifetime, enough so that for generations after stories about him were something to scare the kids with