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some individuals had died of the disease, while others had survived.
    Although it is understandable that epidemics of terminal disease would terrify most ordinary people, as they do today, explanations of them in terms of vampires, evil spirits, and the like were quite damaging to the communities concerned. In the worst cases, they resulted in the persecution of innocent individuals and families: bodies would be dug up and ritually dismembered, burned, or otherwise mutilated. In a traditional, religious society, this would of course have been deeply disturbing for relatives, who would regard such exhumations as a desecration. Even more disturbing, individuals who were still alive, or suffering illness, might be suspected of being vampires, and would be persecuted or shunned.

     
The romantic ‘Consumptive’
     
    There were a number of diseases that gave rise to specific fears about vampires, mainly connected to the bodily changes they caused. For example, tuberculosis was often thought of as a sign of vampirism. This was related to with the fact that sufferers from the disease may cough up blood, and may appear pale. (Significantly, tuberculosis in former times was known as ‘consumption’, because the sufferer’s body appeared to be eaten up from within, echoing the notion of the vampire’s bloodsucking ways.) Most commonly, one member of the family would become ill with tuberculosis (TB) and die, while other members became infected and would begin to waste away. As their illness progressed, they would suffer a number of unpleasant traits: their eyes might become red and swollen, and as a result they would develop an aversion to sunlight. Their body temperature would drop, making their skin cold to the touch, like a corpse, and they might become pallid and weak. One traditional story invented to explain this ‘wasting away’ was that victims had been captured by the fairies and made to dance all night at parties, so that they were exhausted during the day. Another fanciful suggestion was that the sick person had been put under a spell by a witch, transformed into a horse, and forced to carry the witch to her coven at night. Most such tales were an attempt to explain the transformation of a healthy person into a weak, ailing being who might, in some ways, resemble a ‘living corpse’.
    Later, throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, TB remained a widespread terminal disease, and other myths began to surround it: for example, that it was caused by masturbation, or that it produced feelings of feverish euphoria, making artists more creative than they would otherwise have been. Indeed, the Romantics positively fetishized the pallor and waif-like appearance of the ‘consumptive’, especially in women, emphasizing their fatalistic beauty, as they saw it. This romantic version of the illness soon found its way into vampire lore, with the stories of doomed love that so much appeal to teenagers today.

     
Porphyria: werewolves and vampires?
     
    Another disease associated with vampirism was porphyria. This is a disease of the blood that is often inherited and whose most unusual symptom is purple discolouration of the faeces and urine (hence the name, which derives from the Greek, meaning, ‘purple pigment’). As porphyria is a relatively rare disease, and has many different symptoms, including seizures and hallucinations, it has historically often been attributed to other conditions, including – most irrationally of all – the status of the sufferer as a vampire.
    There are several reasons why this explanation should have been put forward. First, porphyria often affects the skin, making it extremely sensitive to light. Necrosis of the skin and gums may occur, so that these parts are eaten away, making teeth and nails look longer. Blisters may erupt on the skin, especially if exposed to the sun. There may be an increase of hair growth in unusual places, such as on the forehead. The