Vampirism as a disease: the pathological vampire
If the vampire itself is an undead, the so-called "vampire" is a living and well-to-do person who drinks the blood of animals, his or other people. His behavior is considered deviant, given that in almost all cultures the taboo of blood exists. In this case we can consider vampirism as a disease.
The criminal vampire
Some famous killers in history have been considered vampires, such as the Countess Elizabeth Bathory who used the blood of her victims for ablution rates that have kept her beauty. But in reality, Bathory did not drink blood. According to the most accepted opinion, the "vampire" is a modern phenomenon that takes inspiration from literature trying to imitate it. However, there are two documented nineteenth-century cases in which the protagonists do not seem to be readers of Gothic books. The French chronicles of 1820 speak of the winemaker François Leger who kills and kills a 12-year-old girl and drinks her blood. In 1872 an Italian, Vincenzo Verzeni, a serial murderer strangling his victims, was arrested.
In the case of the last victim, a 14-year-old girl drinks its blood. This action provides a great pleasure to the murderer. It therefore seems possible that some individuals get sexual arousal by sucking the blood of other people, and we discover this trend without going through literature. On the other hand, those of Leger and Verzeni are the only documented cases of actual vampirism.
Vampirism as a disease: the pathological vampire
The criminal vampire must be distinguished from the pathological vampire, which does not necessarily commit crimes. Many "vampires" simply suck the blood of animals or their own. Vampirism as a disease is in turn distinguished from cultural vampirism, which occurs when a person voluntarily decides to offer vampirism as a lifestyle. Psychiatry tends to distinguish the pathological vampire from the simple cultural vampire by highlighting that in the first case blood intake is only one of the personality disorders found in these people, victims of the symptoms of vampirism as a true mental illness.
The Renfield Syndrome
drink blood like vampiresThe clinical psychologist Richard Noll, of Philadelphia, is the author of the most complete work devoted to vampirism as a disease, published in 1992. He proposes to call clinical vampirism "Renfield syndrome", from the name of Dracula's service in Stoker's novel. According to Noll, vampirism includes six characteristics:
1. Vampirism has occurred from a crucial event that normally occurs in childhood, and the bleeding experience is the exciting offer. After puberty, this arousal related to blood is experienced as sexual.
2. The progression of Renfield syndrome follows a typical pathway. Initially, autovampirism is developed, always in infancy: cuts are started
in the skin to produce blood that is ingested, then you learn how to open veins and arteries to drink a more connected flow of warm blood. Blood can be ingested immediately or stored in jars or bottles. Masturbation often accompanies autovampiric practices. The zoophagia is generally found later, in the sense of drinking blood of animals after having caught birds, insects, cats or dogs, or procuring blood in slaughterhouses. The last stage is the actual vampirism, that is to procure and drink the blood of other living human beings. Normally this involves some form of sexual activity among consenting people, except in cases that lead to the criminal.
3. The compulsive desire to drink blood almost always has a strong sexual component.
4.The blood becomes a sexualized symbol of life and power, so patients with Renfield syndrome experience experiences of well-being and power after drinking blood.
5. Renfield syndrome affects most males.
6. Necrophilia and necrophagy are absolutely not part of this disorder.
The compulsive character of the act of drinking blood distinguishes the patient with Renfield syndrome from the cultural vampire, who can declare that he "needs" blood but actually devotes himself to vampirism on the basis of a choice or a fashion. Sometimes the distinction is not so clear, because pathological vampires often find their "donors" among cultural vampires. However, psychiatrists agree that the need to drink blood is really mandatory, it is faced with a form of disease.
Porphyria
It is a metabolic disease caused by the lack of an enzyme, which in some of its forms can cause extreme sensitivity to sunlight, excessive hair and hair growth, the reddish color of the eyes, skin and teeth, excess iron or, on the contrary, frequent bleeding requiring blood transfusions.
Porphyria patients are absolutely healthy people of mind who have had the misfortune of being linked to the phenomena of vampirism.
Some scholars in the past have advanced the hypothesis that, in the Middle Ages, porphyria patients were induced by doctors to drink blood to replace the one lost in bleeding, and that this behavior, associated with their physical appearance (sharp teeth, pale skin, etc.). ) would have given birth to the mythology of the vampire and the werewolf. As noted scholars have pointed out, the hypothesis is completely unfounded and for various reasons. First of all, the folklore vampire was not born in the Middle Ages, but later. Furthermore, the first folkloric vampires do not have sharp teeth, which are invented by Stoker for his Dracula in the nineteenth century.
Still, the alleged practice of ingesting the blood would not have brought any relief to these patients, because the blood that passes from the stomach cannot in any way make up for that lost by the bleeding. Finally, we must also bear in mind that not all Porphyria sufferers suffer from haemorrhages, but only a part. In short, associating Porphyria with vampirism is nonsense and many patients have paid the price, becoming the object of bad taste, or ending up being avoided by friends and relatives.
