Poland and Western Russia have, however, been for two centuries the stage on which most of these dread tragedies have occurred. Men and women were reported to have been seen in broad daylight sucking the blood of men and beasts, while in other cases dogs and even wolves were suspected of being upires or vampires, as blood-suckers are called in most Slavic dialects. The terror grew as these reports found their way into newspapers and journals, till fear drove men and women to resort to the familiar remedy of mixing blood with the meal used for their bread; they escaped not by any healing powers inherent in the horrid mixture, but thanks to the faith they had in the efficacy of the prescription and the moral courage exhibited in its application. To prevent the spreading of the epidemic the bodies of the vampires were disinterred, and when found bleeding, were decapitated or impaled or burned in public. In some parts of Hungary the disease appeared in the shape of a white spectre which pursued the patients; they declined visibly and died in a week or a fortnight. It was mainly in this country that physicians attending the disinterment of suspected bodies noticed the presence of more or less considerable quantities of blood, which was still fluid and actually caused the cheeks to look reddish. Some of the witnesses even thought they noticed an effort to breathe, faint pulsations, and a slight change of features; these were, however, evidently nothing more than the effects of currents of air which accompanied the opening of the coffin. It was here also that animals were first believed to have been attacked by vampires; cows were found early in the morning bleeding profusely from a wound at the neck, and horses standing in their stalls trembling, covered with white foam, and so thoroughly terrified as to become unfit for use.
Another period of excitement due to accounts of vampirism comprised the middle of last century, when all Europe was deeply agitated on the subject. The Emperor of Germany and other monarchs appointed committees of learned men to investigate the matter; theologians and skeptics, philosophers and physicians, took up the discussion, and hundreds of volumes were published on the mysterious question, but no satisfactory result was ever obtained. Many declared the whole a fable or merely the effect of diseased imaginations, others looked upon it as a malignant and epidemic disease, and not a few as the unmistakable work of the devil. Learned men searched the writings of antiquity, and soon found more traces of the fearful disease than they had expected. They discovered that in Thessaly, Epirus, and some parts of the Pieria, men were reported by ancient writers as wandering about at night and tearing all whom they met to pieces. The Lamiæ of the Greeks and the Strigæ of the Romans evidently belonged to the same category, while the later Tympanites of the Greeks were persons who had died while under the ban of the church and were therefore doomed to become vampires. The Slavic population of Moravia and Bohemia was in those days especially rich in instances of vampirism, and so many occurred in Hungary that the Emperor Charles IV. intrusted the investigation of the matter to a prince of Würtemberg, before whom a number of cases were fully authenticated. Men who had died years before, were seen to return to their former homes, some in the daytime, some at night, and the following morning those whom they had visited were found dead and weltering in their blood. In a single village seventeen persons died thus within three months, and in many instances, when bodies were disinterred, they were found looking quite alive. At this time the Sorbonne at Paris also took up the subject, but came to no conclusion, save that they disapproved of the practice of disinterring bodies, "because vampires, as cataleptics, might be restored to life by bleeding or magnetic treatment," according to the opinion of the learned Dr. Piérard. (Revue Spirit., iv.)
Here we come at last to the grain of truth around which this mass of popular superstition has gradually accumulated, and the ignorance of which has caused hundreds of innocent human beings to die a miserable death. There can be no doubt that cases of "suspended animation" or apparent death have alone given rise to the whole series of fearful tales of vampirism. The very words of a recital belonging to the times, and to the districts where vampirism was prevalent, prove the force of this supposition. Erasmus Francisci states that, in the duchy of Krain, a man was buried and then suspected of being a vampire. When disinterred his face was found rosy, and his features moved as if they attempted to smile; even his lips opened as if gasping for air. A crucifix was held before his eyes and a priest called out with a loud voice: "Peace! This is Jesus Christ who has rescued thy soul from the torment of hell, and suffered death for thee!" The sound seemed to penetrate to his ear, and slowly a few tears began to trickle down his cheeks. After a short prayer for his poor soul, his head was ordered to be cut off; a suppressed cry was heard, the body turned over as if still alive, and when the head was severed a quantity of blood ran into the grave. It was as clear a case of a living man who had been buried before death as has ever been authenticated. Nor are such cases as rare as is popularly believed. High authorities assure us that, for instance, after imperfect poisoning, in several kinds of suffocation, and in cases of new-born children who become suddenly chilled, a state of body is produced which presents all the symptoms of complete suspension of the functions of life. Such apparent death is, according to the same high medical authority, a period of complete rest, based upon a suspension of the activity of the heart, the lungs, and all spontaneous functions, extending frequently to the sense of touch, and the intellect even. At the same time the natural heat of the body sinks until it seems to have disappeared altogether. The duration of this exceptional state is uncertain, at times the patient awakes suddenly, and in full possession of all his faculties; in other cases external means have to be employed to restore life. Among many well-authenticated cases of this kind, two of special interest are mentioned by Dr. Mayo. Cardinal Espinosa, the minister of Philip II. of Spain, died after a short period of suffering. His rank required that he should be embalmed, and his body was opened for the purpose. At the moment when lung and heart were laid open to view, the surgeon observed that the latter was still beating, and the Cardinal, awaking, had actually strength enough to seize with his hand the knife of the operator. The other case is that of a well-known French writer, the Abbé Prévost, who fell down dead in the forest of Chantilly. His apparently lifeless body was found, and carried to a priest's house in the neighborhood. The surgeon ascribed his death to apoplexy; but the authorities ordered a kind of coroner's inquest, and the body was opened. During the operation the Abbé suddenly uttered a cry of anguish—but it was too late!
If a certain number of such cases of apparent death has really given rise to the faith in vampirism, then it is equally possible to suppose, that this kind of trance—for which there may exist a special predisposition in one or the other race—may become at times epidemic. Persons of peculiar nervousness will be ready to be affected, and a locality in which this has occurred may soon obtain an unenviable reputation. Even where the epidemic does not appear in full force, a disturbed state of the nervous system will be apt to lead to dreams by night, and to gossip in the daytime, on the fatally attractive subject, and the patient will soon dream, or really imagine, that a person who has died of the disease has appeared to him by night, and drawn his strength from him, or, in his excited fancy, sucked his life's blood. By such means even the popular way of speaking of nocturnal visits made by the "vampire's ghost" is not so entirely unfounded as would appear at first sight, and the superstition is easily shown to be not altogether absurd, but to be based upon a small substructure of actual truth.
It is remarkable, however, that the Germanic race has never furnished any instances of vampirism, although their ancient faith in a Walhalla, where their departed heroes feast sumptuously, and their custom to place food in the graves of their friends would have seemed most likely to reconcile them to the idea that men continue to live in their graves.
How sadly persistent, on the other hand, such superstitions are among the lower races, and in specially ignorant communities, may be gathered from the fact that, as late as 1861, two corpses were disinterred by the peasants of a village of Galicia, and decapitated. The people believed them to be vampires, and to have caused a long-protracted spell of bad weather!
ZOANTHROPY.
Even more fearful yet than vampirism is the disease, very common already in the days of antiquity, which makes men think that they have changed into beasts, and then act as such, according to the logic of insanity. Petronius is probably the first to mention, in his "Feast of Trimalchio," a case of lycanthropy, when Niceros relates how someone who was journeying with him threw off his garments, changed into a wolf and ran away into the forest. When he returned home, his account continues, he found that a wolf had fallen upon his flock, but had been wounded by a servant in the neck with a lance. Thereupon he goes to inquire after his fellow-traveler, and finds him sick in bed with a physician by his side, who binds up an ugly wound in his neck. The well-known writer took this episode from the Arcadians, a rude nation of shepherds, whose flocks were frequently attacked by wolves, and among whom stories of men changed into wild beasts, were quite current. Nor must we forget, among historic personages, the daughter of King Prœtus of Argos, who believed herself changed into a cow; and of Nebuchadnezzar, who according to his own touching account "was driven from meat, did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagle's feathers, and his nails like bird's claws." (Daniel iv. 33.) The early days of Christianity are naturally full of incidents of this kind, but what is remarkable, zoanthropy was then already treated as a mere delusion. The holy man Macarius once saw a large procession approaching his hermitage in Egypt; it was headed by a number of persons who led a large and imposing-looking woman by a bridle, and followed by a crowd of people of all ages. When they came near they told his disciples that the woman had been changed into a mare, and had thus remained for three days and nights without food—would the saint pray over her and restore her to her natural condition? The delusion was so forcibly contagious that the disciples also forthwith saw a mare, and not a woman, and refused to admit the animal to the presence of the hermit! Fortunately the latter had retained his self-control; he rebuked his followers, saying: "You are the real beasts, that imagine you see something which does not exist. This woman has not been changed, but your eyes are deluded." Then he poured holy water over her, and at once everybody saw her once more in her natural shape. He dismissed her and her escort with the words: "Go more frequently to church and take the holy sacrament; then you will escape such fearful punishment."
During the Middle Ages a similar disease existed in many parts of Europe; men were changed into dogs or wolves, sometimes as a divine punishment for great crimes, at other times in consequence of a delusion produced by Satan. Such unfortunate men walked on all fours, attacked men and beasts, but especially children, killed and devoured them. They actually terrified many people into believing as confidently in this delusion as they believed in it themselves! For this is one of the specially fearful magic phenomena of zoanthropy that it is apt to produce in healthy persons the same delusion as in the sufferer. Many cases also are recorded of persons lying in deep sleep, produced by narcotic ointments, who, seeing visions, fancied that they were acting like wolves. In the year 1598 such a disease raged as an epidemic in the Jura mountains, till the French Parliament determined to make an end of it by treating all the afflicted either as insane or as persons possessed by the devil and therefore deserving instant death. Among Slavic nations and the Magyars lycanthropy is so closely connected with vampirism that it is not always easy to draw the line between the two diseases. There can be no doubt, however, that it is merely a variety of possession, arising from the same unhappy state in which dualism is developed in the soul, and two wills contend with each other for superiority to the grievous injury of mind and body. The only distinctive feature is this, that in lycanthropy not only the functions of the brains but also those of the skin are disordered, and hence an impression arises that the latter is hairy and shaggy after the manner of wild beasts.
The German Währwolf (were-wolf or man-wolf) is the same as the lycanthropos of the Scythians and Greeks and the versipellis of the Romans; he was in German mythology connected with Woden. Hence, probably, the readiness with which the disease during the Middle Ages took hold of the minds of Germans; but at that period nearly all the nations of Europe firmly believed in the reality of such changes.