Gibber-gabber
Late Halloween story…Vampire legend might be ‘true’
beingzoe 2008-12-01 18:25:24 UTC

I know this is a little late for Halloween, but I stumbled on this article at PersonalMD entitled, “Rabies May Have Inspired Vampire Legend.”

Apparently there is an anthropological theory that assumes many popular myths and legends were inspired by facts and the story of the vampire just might follow.

Rabies victims share many traits amazingly similar to those attributed to vampires. Not only do they share many traits, but in eastern Europe in the early 18th century they experienced a serious rabies outbreak, we also find the origins of the vampire myth.

According to the article, Gomez-Alonso, a neurologist at Hospital Xeral in Vigo, Spain noticed a rabies-vampire connection after watching a vampire film in 1981.

A few of the common traits:

• Rabies is typically passed via the bite of an infected animal
• Victims experience hypersensitivity to strong stimuli (think light, mirrors, garlic)
• Rabies causes an aversion to water and victims won’t swallow their own saliva causing frothing
• Rabies causes facial spasms, including lips jerking back over the teeth

Gomez-Alonso speculates that misdiagnosis of rabies played a key role in creating the vampire legend. The symptoms of rabies do not appear for a couple of weeks and by then the original wound of an animal bite would have healed. Adding to the legend, rabies victims blood is slow to clot, so when bodies would have been exhumed, even weeks after burial, bodies could have been found still with blood and looking somewhat lifelike.

Now if we can just figure out the cause of the zombie legend I won’t have to keep preparing for Z-day.

See the full article "Rabies May Have Inspired Vampire Legend ":http://www.personalmd.com/news/a1998092105.shtml at PersonalMD

Vampire Morning image used under a
Creative Commons License
courtesy of Joe Crawford at Flickr

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