Med Mal Infect. 2012 Sep;43(9):363-7. doi: 10.1016/j.medmal.2013.06.014. Epub 2013 Aug 3.
Bacteria and vampirism in cinema.
Source
Laboratoire de bactériologie et d'hygiène, UBM, CHU de Poitiers, BP 577, 86021 Poitiers cedex, France. Electronic address: o.castel@chu-poitiers.fr.
Abstract
A vampire is a non-dead and non-alive chimerical creature, which, according to various folklores and popular superstitions, feeds on blood of the living to draw vital force. Vampires do not reproduce by copulation, but by bite. Vampirism is thus similar to a contagious disease contracted by intravascular inoculation with a suspected microbial origin. In several vampire films, two real bacteria were staged, better integrated than others in popular imagination: Yersinia pestis and Treponema pallidum. Bacillus vampiris was created for science-fiction. These films are attempts to better define humans through one of their greatest fears: infectious disease.
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