Screen Science

What if vampires really gobbled blood, asks JOHN HOLDEN

What would happen if you actually drank blood? Of all the movie characters we humans get excited about, the vampire has undergone the biggest facelift. In the past he was scary, sometimes a little overweight, and certainly not boyfriend material.

The Twilight saga has changed that. But is there science behind vampirism? Here’s the first let-down: there is absolutely, positively, categorically no evidence to suggest the existence of vampires.

The myth of the blood-drinking vampire began with Vlad the Impaler in the 13th century. The Prince of Wallachia, or Vlad to his friends, had a habit of putting his enemy’s heads on spikes and drinking their blood, hoping to draw strength from it.

While the cult of vampirism exists – some members of occult groups have been known to drink blood – its popularity stems from the 1897 Dracula novel, by Irish writer Bram Stoker.

What actually happens when you drink blood is far less interesting: “Blood is an excellent source of iron but that’s about all we’d get from drinking it,” explains Prof John Cassidy of the DIT School of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences. “The iron would be extracted in your stomach, and the haemoglobin would stay in your intestines. You would have to drink a lot for it to pass out intact on the other side.”

Although, don’t forget that if you’ve ever eaten black pudding, you’ve been enjoying a blood sausage.

There are psychiatric cases – with a doctor recently describing how a 21-year-old man asked a Dublin hospital for blood because he’d rather have that than hurt anyone.

A link, albeit dubious, has also been made between vampirism and a certain skin disorder.

“It’s been suggested that those suffering from porphyria show symptoms of vampirism,” says Cassidy. “Porphyria is a disease which prevents the iron being assimilated into the haemoglobin and the symptoms are skin photosensitivity and a supposed lust for blood. But the evidence to link the two doesn’t hold water.”

In this case, blood isn’t thicker than water.