The question naturally follows, how is this malady, viewing it as one in these cases, propagated?
At such seasons, it is far from improbable that there is some physical cause in operation, some meteorological influence perhaps, electrical or otherwise, disposing the system to be a readier prey to the seizure. As certain constitutions of the year alter the blood and lead to fever or cholera, why should not others render the nervous system irritable and proner to derangement?
Then it is well known that fright will bring on certain kinds of fits—in women hysteric fits, in the youth of either sex epileptic fits; and certainly no ghastlier terror can there be than the accredited apprehension of vampyrism. And it deserves remark, that impressions upon the mind are known to be capable of shaping particular kinds of fits, and especially of exciting and determining the features of sensorial illusions, that seem adjuvants in vampyrism.
We are able to creep yet a step nearer to the mark. There is great reason to believe that some human beings have had the power of throwing themselves into the state of seeming death, voluntarily. In Gooch's surgical works, there is an account of a Colonel Townsend, who asserted this of himself, and challenged Gooch to witness the performance. And you may read in the narrative of Gooch, how he and two or three other competent witnesses saw Colonel Townsend dispose himself to favour the invasion of this fit, and how he gradually fell into a state apparently devoid of animation. A very few years ago there was a story in the papers of a native in India, who undertook for a reward to do the same feat, and to allow himself to be buried for a stipulated period. A gentleman, certainly not of a credulous turn in general, told me he was in India at the time with his regiment; and, though not on the spot, that he knew the parties who brought the conjuror to work; and that he believed they positively buried him, and, at the end of the time agreed upon, disinterred him, and found him alive. But be this story true or false, the case of Colonel Townsend remains to show the thing asserted to have been possible—and this remark may be safely added: Whatever change of the kind the will can bring about, can be twice as readily wrought by fear or a disturbed imagination.
You are, I hope, or fear rather, by this time satiated with the marvellous and with the subject. What!—yet another question? Ay. How came this superstition to arise?
The answer is ready. In those days the belief in ghosts was absolute, and a vampyr was a sort of ghost. When an ignorant person, that is, when any one in those days became the subject of a sensorial illusion representing a human being, to a certainty he identified the creation of his fancy as somebody he had seen or heard of; then he would tell his acquaintances that the ghost of such a person haunted him. If the fright brought on a fit, or seemed to cause his death, the neighbours would remember how he had before been haunted. Then, in any case, what more natural than to disinter the body of a supposed visitant, to know why he is unquiet in the grave? Then, if once a body so disinterred were found in the fresh and undecomposed state, the whole delusion would start into existence. The violence used would force blood from the corpse; and that would be construed into the blood of a victim. The absence of a scar on the throat of the victim, would throw no difficulty in the way to the vampyr theory, because vampyrs enjoyed the ghostly character, and all its privileges. Supposing, again, that at any time chance had brought to light a body interred alive, and lying still in this fit, the whole yarn of superstition might again have been spun from that clue.
Do you want more than this? I shall begin to think you at heart superstitious. I tell you it is contrary to the rules of inductive logic, to look for, or to use more principles than are sufficient for the reasonable explanation of phenomena. Yet you urge, do you, that it is no less unphilosophical, in an obscure and unsettled inquiry, wholly to exclude the consideration of unlikely possibilities?—Well! it is nothing to me. Have it your own way: suppose, if you like, that the man in the grave had something to do with spreading the disease, and that his nervous system, in its abnormal state, could put itself in relation with that of another person at a distance. If you like it, have it so. In one sense, it simplifies the matter. But though I cannot deny your supposition to be possible, you will excuse me if I profess to hold the solution, which I have myself given, to be sufficient.
Well! there is an end of the subject, at all events; and I accept your thanks for having told you all I know about vampyrism. I deserve them more than you are aware. At the churchyard in Meduegna, my dear Archy, I had you thoroughly in my power. I saw how your curiosity was raised, and that an picture I had drawn would have been accepted by you with avidity; and I must confess it did at one moment occur to me, to describe to you the exact dress and deportment of the three regimental surgeons, or Feldscherers, (a handsome word signifying field-barbers), John Flickinger, Isaac Stegel, and John Fredrick Baumgartner, as well as the behaviour and remarks of a drummer boy, who held the instrument case during the intermortem examination, an event he witnessed for the first time. But I would not abuse my advantage; so I let you off cheaply with the sole fabrication of Nina, and the personal characteristics of Arnod Paole, of whom unfortunately nothing has come down to posterity, but that he was haunted by a vampyr at Cossova, fell from a hay-cart at Meduegna, and died, and lived a vampyr himself.
I remain, dear Archy,
Yours, &c.
Mac Davus.