Bram Stoker`s Dracula

Running Head : DISEASE IN BRAM STOKER`S DRACULA

Disease in Bram Stoker 's Dracula

[Author 's Name]

[Institution 's Name] Disease in Bram Stoker 's Dracula

As science continues to illuminate the darkened corners of our world another mythic tale--the drinking of blood by the ubiquitous Dracula--may have a basis in fact according to Wayne Tikkanen , a professor of chemistry at California State University , Los Angeles "I am a trained scientist . I don 't believe in vampires and werewolves Tikkanen told Anthony Breznican for an AP release on Halloween , 1998 Tikkanen

speculates that some European monster myths were the product of a blood disease known as porphyria that causes the skin to weaken and be negatively affected by ultraviolet rays that change heme , a component of blood that carries oxygen to the brain , into a toxin . As the disease progresses , the skin blackens and ruptures in the sun , followed by hair growing in the scars . Lips are burned , causing them to peel back , thus making the teeth more prominent . In some cases the nose erodes and the fingers disintegrate , making the hands resemble paws . The disease affects one in 100 ,000 people and is treatable with medication . Tikkanen thinks it is possible that those afflicted with the disease centuries ago may have drunk animal blood to relieve their pain as a folk remedy and that they would have to go out at night in to avoid the sun , and that perhaps this behavior was co-opted into myths "You may do this all the time , but people will only see you when the night is at its brightest--or in other words , a full moon " Tikkanen said

Unfortunately , the result of such myth-making was that as many as 600 victims of this disease were considered to be monsters by the 16th-century European judge H . Bouget , who subsequently had them burned at the stake "Just think : you 're horribly disfigured but you 're perfectly lucid " Tikkanen said "You don 't know what 's happening to you , and the doctor doesn 't want to treat you even if he knew how . Your priest wants you to confess your sins or the judge will burn you at the stake . But you don 't know what you 've done wrong " Other elements of the Dracula myth often include garlic , which Tikkanen says causes victims of porphyria to suffer violent illness because of the creation of toxins in their blood . Fear of the cross also makes sense in this theory , because the cross represents the Church and thus the Inquisition , which would have instituted the torture and murder of the sufferers of porphyria

In the same vein , the superstitious Romanian society projected its fear of disease and deviancy onto Dracula , thus rising the well-liked folklore hypothesis that "a man or woman who has led a predominantly wicked existence will almost certainly become a vampire it is his curse for the wicked deeds committed during the usual term of his life , as well as an entrance that...