Vampirism - both myth and reality
You have to really believe in vampires to become like that
According to tradition, Hungary and Romania are considered the birthplace of legends about vampires, ghouls, ghouls. Although some of the scholars of folklorists believe that this frightening plot, the Magyars and Vlachs were borrowed from their South Slavic neighbors - Serbs and Croats. But with the light hand of the Englishman Brem Stoker, the author of the famous "Count Dracula", the bloodthirsty monsters set off on an endless journey through the pages of novels and films around the world.
For more than a hundred years, vampires have been professionally interested only in folklorists, filmmakers and writers working in the genre of "black" fiction, but recently there have been many publications claiming to be sensational, claiming that vampirism is a reality, a consequence of a blood disease, and doctors need to deal with it …
The authors of such publications refer to the work of modern doctors, the stories of the vampires themselves, of course anonymous, and to the evidence of the official criminal chronicle about the capture of maniacs who kill people in order to eat their blood. To what extent does the medical explanation of folk tradition correspond to reality?
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Porphyria, anemia, anhydratic ectodermal dysplasia - all these diseases are associated with a change in the formula of human blood, often called vampirism. The lack of erythrocytes and iron in the blood makes patients with these diseases very sensitive to sunlight. Even a short stay of patients in direct sunlight often causes them severe burns. And of course, a person suffering from such a disease gradually switches to a nocturnal lifestyle. A change in the blood formula leads to damage to the endocrine system, which, as a result, entails a change in the patient's appearance: pale skin, hair that resembles the fur of an animal, the unusual structure of nails and their color. All this really makes the patient suffering from hemorrhage look like a monster from folk legends.
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However, does it follow from this that a person with unhealthy blood will necessarily experience an irresistible desire to suck the blood of other people for his own health?
Blood is rightly considered the life-giving liquid. But all its amazing qualities act only when it flows through the vessels of a living person. Once in the human digestive system, it differs little from any nutritional product. In terms of iron and protein content, blood can be attributed to high-calorie foods, but it is difficult to break down by the pancreas and in its raw form is very harmful to the kidneys. Having drunk more than 300 grams of raw blood, a person may well get severe poisoning. African Masai cattle breeders, whose daily diet includes the blood of cows, consume it in strictly limited quantities and mixed with milk. It is obvious that a patient with a hematological disease, even constantly eating raw blood, will not be able to improve the formula of his blood in any way.
According to most folk tales, it was possible to be born or become a vampire throughout life. Hungarian and Romanian peasants believed that vampires became: children who died unbaptized; children conceived during fasting and weaned early from their mother's breast; as well as those born on the new moon. In Transylvania, this real ghoul reserve, it was believed that if a mother ate little salt while pregnant, her child risked becoming a vampire. A person whose mother saw a vampire during pregnancy is likely to become a vampire. The Montenegrin Serbs were sure: a person buried … face down will surely rise as a vampire.
The peasants in Russia and Little Russia believed that the seventh son of the seventh son in the family becomes a vampire and that a dead man is resurrected as a ghoul after a dog or a wolf jumped over the coffin with his body. And, of course, all the peoples of Europe believed that the one bitten by a vampire would become a vampire himself.
The last method of reproduction, very much liked by writers and filmmakers, is probably the most incredible, ridiculous and even stupid. If every vampire throughout life (vampires, if they are not killed, are actually immortal) had bitten at least 15 people, then a hundred years later the whole world would be inhabited exclusively by members of the night bloodsucking brotherhood.
In light of the above, if you do not take into account the ritual drinking of blood, which is practiced in some Satanist sects, vampires could be dismissed and considered a medieval superstition. But all the same vampires, real, really drinking the blood of people, existed and exist. And maybe some light on this problem will be shed by a story that took place in the 1830s in the Bavarian city of Würzburg …
Real vampire (case from life)
Dr. Heinrich Spatz was a Czech native. Shortly before the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, he graduated from the University of Prague and was hired as a military doctor in the Austrian army. After the war in 1819, he settled in Würzburg with his young wife Maria.
Dr. Spatz was a wealthy man, in the city he bought a 2-storey spacious mansion, kept his own exit. He was a cheerful, sociable person, led an active social life and in a very short time became one of the most fashionable doctors in Würzburg. He did a lot of charity work, donated money for godly deeds and actually worked for free in a hospital for the poor. He was no stranger to scientific pursuits. He wrote two works that were very famous at that time. One for military field surgery, the second for the treatment of certain infectious diseases.
1831 - Heinrich Spatz, to everyone's surprise, announced that he was leaving Würzburg and going home, as he had received a rather advantageous position at the University of Prague. He sold his property and left for the Czech Republic.
A month after the doctor's departure, two young doctors, Friedrich Bauer and Johann Riggert, former assistants to Dr. Spatz, came to the Würzburg judicial authorities. They argued that the Spatz were vampires. Police officials might have considered such a statement a stupid joke if the young doctors had not pointed out the disappearance of a certain Joachim Faber.
This retired soldier, a one-armed invalid who served as a gatekeeper at the hospital for the poor where Dr. Spatz worked, had indeed disappeared into some unknown place the year before. Neither his family, nor numerous relatives, nor the hospital staff knew where he was. Police officers have begun to recall mysterious disappearances in the city over the past few years and have counted at least six cases in two years. As a rule, the disappeared were poor people, but permanent city dwellers, and for each of them the police had a statement from their relatives about the disappearance. This was already serious.
Despite the fact that new owners began to live in the Spatz mansion, the police searched the house. The first superficial examination was inconclusive. However, a second, thorough search revealed something that shook the entire city.
In the basement of the mansion, a mass grave was found and opened, in which there were the remains of at least 18 people. Among the remains, a skeleton without an arm was found with traces of surgical amputation. These bones have been identified as the remains of the missing Joachim Faber. No other bones could be identified. No items or remnants of clothing were found in the grave. As you can see, the bodies were buried naked, and some of the remains were found to be dismembered. Then many remembered that Dr. Spatz willingly took on the arrangement of the fate of his poor patients. Usually, these were beggar tramps, brought by fate to Würzburg, where they had neither relatives nor friends. They left the hospital, blessing the kind doctor, and no one ever saw them again.
Other oddities from Spatz's life also came to mind. The doctor's mansion was kept on a grand scale, but all the servants, including the coachman and the groom, were visiting. All the servants lived in the neighborhood, but none of them stayed in the house overnight.
The authorities sent a request to Prague regarding Dr. Spatz, they received an unambiguous answer: such a person does not teach at the university, did not teach, and was not invited to teach. And in general, no traces of the mysterious doctor were found in Prague. Moreover, they found out that during the Napoleonic Wars, a surgeon named Heinrich Spatz was never listed in the Austrian army. They could not find out anything about the fate of Maria Spatz. The investigation has reached a dead end. The Shpatsev couple disappeared without a trace. But this did not end there.
Six months later, one of the informers, Friedrich Bauer, committed suicide. Shortly before his death, he left home, leaving his wife and child, rented a tiny apartment in a poor suburb of neighboring Nuremberg, broke all ties with relatives and friends. He began to be afraid of daylight and spent whole days in a room with closed shutters. He then fell into a state of prostration, then began to rush about the room, filling the air alternately with terrible blasphemy and earnest prayers. He became pale, lost terribly thin and ate only raw blood, though not human, but pork, which he bought from a nearby butcher. From such a strange diet, he developed terrible stomach pains, but he flatly refused to be treated and to take normal food. His landlord honestly admitted that he was not at all surprisedfinding his guest one morning hanging from the ceiling beam. The suicide left a confused posthumous letter, ending with fierce curses against Heinrich Spatz. It was officially announced that Dr. Bauer committed suicide due to unbearable stomach cramps.
1832 - Dr. Johann Riggert also shot himself. This happened in the country house of his sister Martha, who was married to a wealthy businessman Gauss. Riggert's suicide was preceded by the death of his six-year-old nephew Anton, who crashed while falling from a pony. Martha Gauss did not long survive the death of her son and brother. She died in 1834. Dark rumors circulated around the death of Riggert and his nephew for a long time, but gradually the case of Dr. Spatz and his assistants was forgotten. It was remembered only in 1884, when Ruprecht Gauss died at the age of 84, and his diary was in the hands of the heirs.
From Gauss's diary, it was found out that in the spring of 1832, Johann Riggert killed his own nephew, released blood from the body of the unfortunate child, and wanted to drink it. While doing this he was caught by the boy's nanny. Distraught by what she saw, the woman struck the killer several blows with a fireplace poker, from which he died on the spot. Ruprecht Gauss had to spend huge amounts of money on bribes to police officials and doctors in order to hide this wild story. As a result, it was announced that Anton Gauss died in an accident, and his uncle Riggert committed suicide, could not survive the death of his beloved nephew.
Researchers have no consensus about the personality of Heinrich Spatz. Some consider him to be really a vampire; others - a criminal associated with one of the thieves' gang of Würzburg; still others, a member of a secret Luciferian sect that practiced human sacrifice. Many, not without reason, believe that this is an illegal anatomy of corpses, which was then considered a serious crime. However, it is unlikely that the secret of the Spatz couple will be fully disclosed. Gauss's diaries burned down along with the entire Würzburg archive during the Anglo-American bombing during the Second World War. We can only judge this case by the work of the German historian Paul Hanyke, who in the 1930s published a small study on the "Würzburg vampires."
Hanyke believes that the unfortunate Bauer and Riggert became victims of a kind of zombie, and perhaps even autosuggestion. They so believed that their patron was a ghoul and infected them with vampirism that they simply went crazy.
Hanyke's point of view is also confirmed by modern data from law enforcement agencies of various states. Most of the detained maniacs-vampires did not have any blood disease, as a result, we can only talk about mental pathology …
V. Smirnov