Before Stoker’s notorious Dracula, there was an irrational fear spreading throughout the European nations in the 17th and 18th century. Becky Little explains how this popular, spreading belief was debunked, “By the mid-18th century, Pope Benedict XIV declared that vampires were “fallacious fictions of human fantasy,” and the Hapsburg ruler Maria Theresa condemned vampire beliefs as “superstition and fraud” (Little, 1). However, this didn’t stop people from digging up bodies in the 19th century. Becky explains that these beliefs often occurred due to the misunderstanding of how bodies decompose.
According to Wyatt Redd, back in the 1900s, Tuberculosis was a highly contagious bacterial disease, and people were unsure of the cause and how to fight this disease. The effects of Tuberculosis leaves a person very pale and skinny, along with the symptom of coughing up blood, which makes us understand why it might have led people to believe there were vampires walking among them. Since people were nervous about the undead coming back to life, they would often dig up the dead bodies and see the growth of teeth and nails(1), confirming the idea of their loved one being a vampire. In order to escape the vampire attacks, the people would cut out the heart of a dead body and burn it, along with rearranging the person’s body in the casket so they would not be able to get out(2). However, what the people of the 19th century didn’t realize, was that the interactions they had with the body carrying the disease, is what made them also contract the extremities of Tuberculosis.
Little, Becky. “The Bloody Truth About Vampires.” National Geographic, 27 Oct. 2016, www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/10/vampires-europe-new-england-halloween-history/#close.
Redd, Wyatt. “The Truth Behind the 19th Century New England Vampire Panic.” HistoryCollection.co, 30 Sept. 2019, historycollection.co/truth-behind-19th-century-new-england-vampire-panic/2/.
Tucker, Abigail. “The Great New England Vampire Panic.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 1 Oct. 2012, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-new-england-vampire-panic-36482878/.
After reading your blog on the vampire epidemic and Noelle's blog on burial practices, I definitely appreciate the knowledge we have today and the improvements that have been made in the health field. It's hard to imagine that people truly believed that vampires were real. I do think it's interesting how vampire legends have developed over the years and how there's an established set of characteristics we associate with vampires today. Because this modern image of vampire has been so strongly established, I had a difficult time adjusting to the differences in Dracula. I think I would definitely have a different experience reading Dracula if I were reading the novel closer to the time when it was actually written.
ReplyDeleteThis was a interesting post, on how fear and superstition gets the best of people. When people see things they can't understand or lack education about, it is often deemed as evil or sinful. An example of these of events can be shown during the Salem witch trials,The Red Scare, the Holocaust as among many others, where innocent people were defamed, tortured and even killed. In all societies, there is always desire to find a scapegoat (supernatural or not), but in reality, humans are the real monsters.
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