sufferer’s urine may grow red or purple, and the teeth and fingernails might also appear red. The skin might also appear to glow in the dark. Not surprisingly, in former times, these alarming symptoms were attributed to the supernatural. With their red teeth and nails, and their pale or glowing skins, people with porphyria were often suspected of being vampires. If they grew hair on their faces, they might also be persecuted as werewolves.
In recent years, historians and medical commentators in Britain have advanced the theory that hereditary porphyria affected many of the nobility, including the monarchy. Retrospective diagnoses of the illnesses affecting such monarchs as Mary, Queen of Scots and King George III, have been made, suggesting that they were all suffering from porphyria. This idea has appealed so greatly to novelists, film-makers and the like that it is now commonly assumed to be a matter of fact that there was hereditary porphyria among the British monarchy, and possibly the whole of European nobility. Furthermore, people suppose that this was largely due to intermarriage and inbreeding. In fact, the theory has never been proved and remains a matter of conjecture.
Most of the work done to investigate the link between porphyria and vampirism has resulted in nothing more positive than stigmatizing sufferers from the disease. In 1985, biochemist David Dolphin argued that the age-old connection had arisen since porphyria sufferers in the past might have craved blood. This, he argued, was because consumption of blood eased their symptoms. There was no medical basis to this theory, which seemed to have come about as a result of misunderstanding the nature of the disease. In addition, Dolphin noted that, in the past, the porphyriac’s sensitivity to sunlight could have given rise to the belief that he or she was a vampire. However, as many commentators have pointed out, the idea that vampires are sensitive to sunlight is not originally part of European folklore, but was an addition to the myth introduced in 1922 in the film Nosferatu . Despite the weaknesses of Dolphin’s medical and cultural research, the theory was widely reported, thus forever establishing the connection between porphyria and vampirism in the public mind.
Rabies: the bite of death
From earliest times, the disease of rabies has terrified human beings. Like TB and porphyria, it transforms the mind and body of the sufferer, but usually more dramatically, in a way that brings agony to the sufferer and horrifies the onlooker. Since rabies is a virus that inflames the brain, it causes acute personality and behavioural changes, and if untreated results in death. And as it is transmitted by animals – humans are usually infected by a bite from an animal such as a dog or a bat – many fears have risen up over the centuries about this phenomenon, and have found their way into folkloric tales of werewolves and vampires.
Symptoms of rabies include headache, fever, the inability to swallow water, violent behaviour, and intense pain. So irrational is the behaviour of the infected person that the disease was named from the Latin word meaning ‘madness’. In a rabid condition, human individuals may well become so violent that they bite other people. Since biting people is a behaviour usually attributed to animals, in former times onlookers feared that after being bitten, the sufferer had somehow turned into an animal. Not only this, but if a sufferer did bite someone else, they too would fall victim to the disease, and suffer the same agonizing death.
It is easy to see how, in primitive cultures with very little access to scientific knowledge or medical intervention, societies would interpret the phenomenon of rabies as a sign that an evil spirit from an animal source had, through being bitten by a wolf, dog, or bat, entered a human being. For this reason, anxieties about the largely unknown nature and behaviour of nocturnal animals such as
In recent years, historians and medical commentators in Britain have advanced the theory that hereditary porphyria affected many of the nobility, including the monarchy. Retrospective diagnoses of the illnesses affecting such monarchs as Mary, Queen of Scots and King George III, have been made, suggesting that they were all suffering from porphyria. This idea has appealed so greatly to novelists, film-makers and the like that it is now commonly assumed to be a matter of fact that there was hereditary porphyria among the British monarchy, and possibly the whole of European nobility. Furthermore, people suppose that this was largely due to intermarriage and inbreeding. In fact, the theory has never been proved and remains a matter of conjecture.
Most of the work done to investigate the link between porphyria and vampirism has resulted in nothing more positive than stigmatizing sufferers from the disease. In 1985, biochemist David Dolphin argued that the age-old connection had arisen since porphyria sufferers in the past might have craved blood. This, he argued, was because consumption of blood eased their symptoms. There was no medical basis to this theory, which seemed to have come about as a result of misunderstanding the nature of the disease. In addition, Dolphin noted that, in the past, the porphyriac’s sensitivity to sunlight could have given rise to the belief that he or she was a vampire. However, as many commentators have pointed out, the idea that vampires are sensitive to sunlight is not originally part of European folklore, but was an addition to the myth introduced in 1922 in the film Nosferatu . Despite the weaknesses of Dolphin’s medical and cultural research, the theory was widely reported, thus forever establishing the connection between porphyria and vampirism in the public mind.
Rabies: the bite of death
From earliest times, the disease of rabies has terrified human beings. Like TB and porphyria, it transforms the mind and body of the sufferer, but usually more dramatically, in a way that brings agony to the sufferer and horrifies the onlooker. Since rabies is a virus that inflames the brain, it causes acute personality and behavioural changes, and if untreated results in death. And as it is transmitted by animals – humans are usually infected by a bite from an animal such as a dog or a bat – many fears have risen up over the centuries about this phenomenon, and have found their way into folkloric tales of werewolves and vampires.
Symptoms of rabies include headache, fever, the inability to swallow water, violent behaviour, and intense pain. So irrational is the behaviour of the infected person that the disease was named from the Latin word meaning ‘madness’. In a rabid condition, human individuals may well become so violent that they bite other people. Since biting people is a behaviour usually attributed to animals, in former times onlookers feared that after being bitten, the sufferer had somehow turned into an animal. Not only this, but if a sufferer did bite someone else, they too would fall victim to the disease, and suffer the same agonizing death.
It is easy to see how, in primitive cultures with very little access to scientific knowledge or medical intervention, societies would interpret the phenomenon of rabies as a sign that an evil spirit from an animal source had, through being bitten by a wolf, dog, or bat, entered a human being. For this reason, anxieties about the largely unknown nature and behaviour of nocturnal animals such as
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