Legends about vampires and werewolves still live today

One of the most revolutionary discoveries in connection with vampirism was made by doctors in the second half of the 20^th century. In 1963, British doctor Lee Illis published his monograph “On porphyria and etiology of werewolves” with an analysis of documented instances of vampirism and werewolves in Europe in the 12-19^th centuries. The doctor supposed that majority of the instances were not connected with superstitions but with porphyria, an infrequent genetic abnormality that reveals with one human out of the total number of 200,000. He said that in case a parent suffered from porphyria the probability of inheriting the disease by the parent’s child was 25 percent. Like many other genetic dysfunctions porphiria arises from incest, and European monarchs who often married close relatives sometimes suffered from the disease.

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As a result of the disease people have problems with pigment metabolism and suffer from hemoglobin decay under the influence of UV radiation or UV rays. Such patients suffer from pains by the light of the sun and have to stay in dark rooms all day long and go out at night only.

In case the disease is getting too serious patients may even have their tendons deformed so that their fingers get curved. The skin around lips and gums grows thinner and harder which makes cutting teeth look like a grin. They have thinner and paler skin, and teeth may sometimes be stained red. In a word, such patients look very much like vampires.

It is clear that the history of Peter Plogojewitz can hardly be explained with the strange disease, but it is likely that people executed as suspected of being vampires or werewolves could in fact be just miserable patients suffering from the disease. Today when gene engineering is successfully developing one can expect that porphyria will in the nearest future stop affecting people.

Bats are the most well-known natural vampires at the time when majority of them in fact feed on insects only. In Central and South America there are vampire bats that suck blood of mammals and birds. Sleeping animals may usually fall victim of natural vampires that may suck up to 40 ml of their blood within 20 minutes. Sometimes natural vampires may attack people, however bites of bats are dangerous for people not because of loss of blood but because of infectious diseases that bats may carry.

Medportal

Translated by Maria Gousseva
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