The Vampire Chronicles

I know this is somewhat unrelated, but I came across this letter in an old back issue of the now defunct magazine OMNI.

It was in response to a science article on rabies, and how rabies may have inspired Bram Stoker and the whole vampire lore.

From Transylvania with Love

It was nearly enough to arouse me before my accustomed nightfall when, among the cards and letters that have been wending their way here for the last, oh, 600 years or so, with word of my supposed affliction.


So now it’s rabies that drives me to seek my lovely victims? Rabies? How Plebeian! Scientists should stay home at night with their doors bolted, if they can’t tell the difference between me, the prince of Walachia, and my old friend Jack Homolupus. Hirsute as he is, Jack is best known as the Wolfman, and it is he who has rabies, a mild case though. Louis Pasteur wouldn’t even take him as a patient. But I digress.


I, the most prominent inhabitant of Transylvania, have never in my life foamed at the mouth. It would be ludicrous to suppose that I had. The foam would obscure my two-inch long canine teeth, one of my most recognizable features, and that would be a pity, don’t you agree? As for biting indiscriminately I can only suggest you review my history. I prefer women as you call them these days liberated women, of good breeding and translucent skin. These ephemeral qualities have always appealed to me. Perhaps I inherited this taste from my Mother.


From my father though I inherited my fondness for the night and my desire for the jugular vein which courses so conveniently up to the neck. I become enraptured just thinking about it. You see my father as his before him, and his before him has a slight ailment, a condition we don’t boast about, it called Porphyria. Mary Queen of Scots passed it on to King George III and so on. When I knew her Mary had a lovely neck, porphyria is mainly an inherited metabolic disorder in which pigment is over produced, but I shan’t bore you with the details. Let it be that the disorder makes my skin sensitive to the light, and I enjoy the night, naturally. Over the years from the exposure of moonlight, some porphyrins have leeched into my bones and teeth causing a miserable case of erythodontia, a reddish staining of my rapier canines. I rather fancy the effect.


If you are interested, erythrodontia shows up best under long-wave ultraviolet rays, but few people care about this anymore, alas


Count Dracula
Whereabouts withheld



Hotwater

 

I watched a program that outlined the rabies theory. Very interesting,