Inspiration for Dracula character may have bled from his eyes: study

Vlad the Impaler, believed by some to be the inspiration for the legendary vampire Dracula, could have suffered from a situation that prompted him to shed tears of blood, according to a new study. 

Seeking to study extra concerning the lifetime of the savage ruler, researchers from Italy’s College of Catania obtained three letters written by Vlad Dracula in Transylvania, in 1457 and 1475, the place he addressed leaders of town of Sibiu over tax assortment and different points.  

Utilizing a non-damaging approach often called ethylene-vinyl acetate, the researchers harvested proteins and peptides from the letters’ rag paper, which they then remoted.

The crew characterised 100 of the peptides as being of human origin. 

After analyzing the peptides from the paperwork, the researchers found that three of the compounds detected within the 1475 letter alone had been related to proteins discovered within the retina and tears.

This instructed that the fearsome tyrant could have suffered from a situation often called haemolacria, the place an individual sheds blood-tinged tears.

“Though proteomics knowledge can’t be thought of exhaustive alone, altogether, these identifications
would possibly point out that Dracula ‘cried tears of blood,’” the authors wrote in a paper printed this week within the journal Analytical Chemistry.

The researchers moreover discovered peptides and proteins on all three paperwork that instructed Vlad Dracula could have had a genetic dysfunction referred to as ciliopathy, which might have affected his organs and cell operate.

The bloody crier additionally could have suffered from inflammatory processes affecting his respiratory tract and pores and skin. 

The 15th-century tyrant, thought of by some to have inspired Bram Stoker’s blood-thirsty rely within the 1897 novel, “Dracula,” lorded over the principality of Wallachia, in what’s now a part of the southern area in fashionable Romania, in the course of the mid-1400s.

Throughout this time, he garnered a popularity as a hard-nosed defender of his land — but in addition a grotesque chief with a penchant for skewering his enemies.

College of Virginia professor Stanley Stepanic, who makes a speciality of Slavic and vampire folklore, was skeptical of the examine.

“We now have no proof of Vlad Dracula shedding tears of blood within the historic document and since anybody touching these letters may have deposited proteins on them over 500-plus years there isn’t a certainty if any of his DNA is on there or which might be his,” Stepanic stated.

The paper’s researchers famous that whereas many individuals in the course of the medieval occasions could have touched the letters, the oldest proteins extracted most definitely belonged to the paperwork’ writer.