The February issue of the
Lancet Psychiatry includes my
"Once bitten", my review of the book Dracula for Doctors by Fiona Subotsky.
“According to Pliny in the first century AD, 'epileptic patients are in the habit of drinking the blood even of gladiators,' considering it 'a most effectual cure for their disease.' Medical science took longer to accept the restorative powers of someone else's blood. During the summer of 1492, in an event sometimes claimed as the first transfusion, the comatose Pope Innocent VIII was reportedly given blood from three ten-year-old boys. The boys died, as did the Pope, and the doctor fled...”
I posted a little more
about Dracula for Doctors last month.
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