What if I told you that the medical condition is behind the creation of vampire myths? A blood disorder called Erythropoietic protoporphyria, the most common form of porphyria, makes patients sensitive to sunlight and they avoid it.
People with this condition often experience symptoms following exposure to sunlight such as painful bleeding spots on the skin. Sometimes known as “the vampire disease”, Porphyria is an inherited blood condition. With porphyria, there’s no craving for blood, but medieval doctors recommended drinking blood as treatment and avoiding sun exposure due to a poor understanding of the dermatologic manifestations of the disease.
There is no physiologic explanation as to why people with porphyria may improve after drinking blood or exhibit an aversion to garlic. Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter “Vicky” and her daughter, Princess Charlotte of Prussia, suffered from porphyria.
Vlad Dracula, of Wallachia, is famous for his aversion to sunlight. There is currently no cure for this condition, and it occurs in about 1 in 74,300 individuals. And
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