There are those in the medical field who are trying to find a medical reason for vampirism. They feel that vampirism is a medical disorder rather than a mental disorder or a metaphysical reality.
Here are some of the various related diseases that closly relate to vampirism.
Gunther's Disease (congenital erythropoietic porphyria)
:
A rare genetic disorder that causes extreme sensitivity to sunlight. People who are afflicted this this disease are not able to tolarate sunlight. They must live their lives in total darkness or if venturing outdoors must be covered from head to toe leaving no part of the skin exposed.
If exposed to sunlight the person will begin to get sever rashes to burns. Blisters will quickly appear and all sores are slow to heal.
Porphyria:This is a little know disease first identified in the nineteenth century. Porphyrias are a metabolic disorder caused by an enzyme deficiency that inhibites the synthesis of heme. The more extreme form of which cause an extreme sensitivity to light.
Severe Narcolepsy Cataplexy: Narcolepsy afflicts about 1 in 2,000 people. It causes the afflected person to fall asleep when they get become emotional through, excitement, laughter, or anger. Cataplexy affects about 75 percent of narcoleptics. Those afflected with Severe Narcolepsy Cataplexy, when they become excited, will lose all paralized by going limp and silent. When these people go into a comatose sleep, and their pulse, heart rate and breatheing seem to disappaer. It is impossible to find a lifesign unless the attending physician knows of the medical condition. When the afflicted person is in a comatose state though, they can hear, see, and are fully awake through the ordeal. Trapped inside their, their bodies are unresponsive to any type of muscle control. they are unable to move their mouth, eyes, feet, arms, or any other part of their anatomy. These people are unable to communicate with the outside world in any way untill the sezure has passed.
Doctors not knowing of the desease, will pronounce the victim deceased. It is not uncommen that in the early part of the century, people with this desease have been buried alive by mistake.
Rabies: In an edition of Neurology, Juan Gomez-Alonzo has argued that the legends of vampires stem about the time of a rabies epidemic. The epidemic struck animals between 1721 and 1728 in Hungary. The Spanish neurologist argued that the classic vampire traits are simular to the symptoms reported in rabies victims. Symptoms are; sensitivity to light, foaming at the mouth, an overwhelming urge to chomp or bite another human being, and hypersexuality.
Neurology, Playboy Magazine, March 1999, pg. 17
