‘The vampire hypothesis’: from fingernails to ministering angels – the first Swedish debunker

ABSTRACT

The following article consists of an introduction by the first author, an annotated translation by the second, and then an analysis by the first, of the earliest known Scandinavian response to the Vampire phenomenon of Medvedia in 1732 by Nicolaus Boye, a state-employed physician residing in Stockholm. The translation shows that Boye’s own article, which constitutes a complete refutation of Johann Flückinger’s claims, was meticulously organised, abstracting and arguing against the major themes which he observed in the Visum et Repertum, while the analysis shows that Boye was working under the topical medical theories of the Dutch botanist and physician Herman Boerhaave. The analysis also demonstrates the extent to which Boye’s rationalism in refuting the Visum at Repertum is informed by his Lutheranism and belief in the Day of Judgement, and concludes by showing examples of the impact his work exerted on other academics in the 1730s.

KEYWORDS:

• Vampires
• enlightenment
• Sweden
• Medicine‌
• Lutheranism
• familiars

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Ádám Mézes, ‘Doubt and Diagnosis: Medical Experts and the Returning Dead of the Southern Habsburg Borderland (1718–1766)’ (Unpublished PHD thesis, Central European University, 2020), 284–85.

2 It must be remembered that Sweden at this time, unlike the Holy Roman Empire, was yet to adopt the Gregorian Calendar of the year we would now consider to be 1732, meaning that when the Visum et Repertum was first distributed on the orders of Charles-Alexander of Würtemberg, Sweden’s dating was that of the old Julian Calendar, and thus for them the Visum et Repurtum was first distributed on 14th of January.

3 Joachim Östlund, ‘The Egyptian Mummy: Curious Collectors and Contested Commodities in the Eighteenth Century,’ in Collecting Curiosities: Eighteenth-century Museum Stobaeanum and the Development of Ethnographic Collections in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Magdalena Naum and Gitte Ingvardson (Lund: Lund University Press, 2020), 70–77, at 75. Johann Leche wrote the first treatise dedicated to the mummy deposited by Carl Gyllenburg in the Museum Stobeanum (1736), opened in 1735 and named after the university’s Professor of Medicine, Kilean Stobaeus, whose private collection provided most of the artefacts – Disputatio historico-medica de mumia Ægyptiaca, quam consensu facultatis medicæ sub præsidio … Joh. Jac. von Döbeln … in academiæ Carolinæ auditor. maj. anno MDCCXXXIX. d. I. Decembr. publico examini submittit auctor Johannes Leche Scanus (Lund: Lund University Printing Press, 1739).

4 Kilian Stobaeus, the Professor of Medicine at Lund University and tutor of Linnaeus, was a devotee of Boerhaave. Magdalena Naum, ‘Kilian Stobaeus – a Brief Biography’, in Collecting Curiosities: Eighteenth-Century Museum Stobeauanum and the Development of Ethnographic Collections in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Magdalena Naum, and Gitte Ingvardson (Lund: Lund University Press, 2020), 15–22, at 19. Likewise, Nils Rosén von Rosenbaum, who approved Boye’s paper, had studied under Boerhaave. For a brief discussion of the import of Boerhaave, and his important inclusion of Cartesian dualism, atomism, and humour theory (despite hostility to other aspects of Aristotle’s views on medicine), please see Roger French, Medicine Before Science: The Business of Medicine from the Middle Ages until Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 228–30.

5 The dates of Nicolaus (Nils) Boye are not known. He was a physician employed by the government (‘poliater’). Nils Rosén von Rosenstein (1706–73) endorsed this article by Boye. He was appointed as a lecturer at Uppsala University in 1731, having previously studied under Herman Boerhaave and others. Rosén held a chair in medicine at Uppsala by 1740, and is considered the father of the modern study of paediatrics.

6 The text has ‘Baccinonem’, which does not exist in Latin. Clive Chandler of the University of Cape Town suggested that it could be a typographical error for ‘Barcinonem’, or Barcelona. This fits some of the historical theories of the spread of syphilis so is most likely accurate. Our thanks to him.

7 Jean de Bussières (1607–78) wrote the Historia Francica in several volumes. Boye’s spelling is incorrect.

8 ‘The Polish Plait’ was a condition of matted hair, rather than a disease, probably caused by unsanitary conditions and bad hygiene. It was described by Starnigelius in 1599.

9 The Nixie are water monsters which take various forms in different mythologies, some less benevolent than others.

10 Nils Retzius (1737) was most likely prompted to consider the role of the ‘incubus’ seriously from this paragraph.

11 Adam Leyel (1623–1686) wrote about the body of Mats Israelsson, which was found in the Falun Copper mine. Acta Literaria Sveciae, 1722, Upsala and Stockholm: Johannes Henricus Russworm, 250–254.

12 Actually, Jovica was the father-in-law of the twenty-year-old Stanojka (Stanoicka), who had claimed that the vampire Milloje (Milloe) had attacked her. Boye states the facts incorrectly.

13 Flückinger states that she died 3 days after giving birth, having smeared herself and the stillborn baby with vampire blood. Again, Boye seems to have noted some of his facts incorrectly.

14 This boy has the same name as the vampire mentioned above, but is not the same person.

15 Given as ‘Ruscha’ in Flückinger.

16 This argument is very different from that of Boye’s fellow Swede Nils Retzius (1737), who says that nightmares themselves might lead to some of the symptoms of vampire attack. Damian Shaw and Matthew Gibson, ‘Slaying Vampires in Eighteenth Century Sweden’, History of European Ideas 48, no. 6 (2022): 744–63, at 751–52; 755–57. Here the dream of a vampire is a by-product of a physical disease.

17 Boye might have become wealthy indeed if blood-letting were enough to prevent death in these cases.

18 Too full of blood.

19 Actually 50 years old.

20 An obvious impossibility.

21 ‘Anima’ might be variously translated as ‘life’, ‘soul’, ‘mind’, ‘vital principle’, etc. Boye’s point is that a dead body cannot suck blood, precisely because it is dead.

22 ‘Anima’ and ‘spiritus’ are used.

23 Burnt offerings.

24 Ádám Mézes, ‘Doubt and Diagnosis: Medical Experts and the Returning Dead of the Southern Habsburg Borderland (1718–1766)’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Central European University, 2020), 7, 138n.

25 For a concise history of the cases of Vampires in the Serbian borderland, and of the public discussion in Central Europe, see also Peter J. Braunlein, ‘The Frightening Borderlands of Enlightenment: The Vampire Problem’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biology and Biological Science 43 (2012): 710–19, at 711–15.

26 Jean de Bussières, Historicae Francicae, 2 vols, (Lugduni [Lyon]: Lavr. Arnaud & Petri Borde, 1671) II, 69–70. De Bussières in fact recounts how this disease was brought back from the New World to Spain, and was ‘lurking hidden’ and then ‘made public’ in France after the French soldiers had unleashed their lust on the Neapolitans, with the French blaming the Spaniards in their army as the cause. It is cited as an example of how much the French behaved loathsomely to the locals, making the latter long for the return of their old King Ferdinand once Charles had conquered them. The inaccuracy of Boye’s paraphrase, as well as the mis-spelling of de Bussières’s name, points to the probable haste with which he was working to finish the article.

27 James E. Lobdell and Douglas Owsley, ‘The Origins of Syphilis’, Journal of Sex Research 10, no. 1 (1974): 76–79, at 79.

28 Certainly the 1699 edict of the Repubblica di Lucca, demanding that all those showing signs of phthisis should be denounced, and the founding of a sanatorium there, points to the seriousness with which the disease was taken in Northern Italy. – N. Riccardi, et al., ‘The Evolution of a Neglected Disease: Tuberculosis Discoveries in the Centuries’, Journal of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene 61, no. 1 Suppl. 1 (2020 Apr 30): E9–E12, at E10.

29 Eglé Sakalauskaité–Juodeikiené, ‘Plica Polonica through the Centuries the Most “Horrible, Incurable, and Unsightly”’, World Neurology: the Official Newsletter of the World Federation of Neurology (March 25 2020), https://worldneurologyonline.com/article/plica-polonica-through-the-centuries-the-most-horrible-incurable-and-unsightly/. Sakalauskaité–Juodeikiené concurs that Starnigelius was the first scientist to identify this disease, but also cites other treatises on the subject by the likes of Michael Gehler (1601) and M. Jacobus Cousinot (1606). Boye does not himself cite his immediate source, and may well have read Starnigelius’s original ‘letter’, although there were many more texts on the subject that he could have consulted.

30 Joel A. Klein, ‘Daniel Sennert and the Chymico-Atomical Reform of Medicine,’ in Medicine, Natural Philosophy and Religion in Post-Reformation Scandinavia, eds. Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 20–37, at 28–29.

31 Herman Boerhaave, Academical Lectures on the Theory of Physic, being a Genuine Translation of his Institutes, and Explanatory Comment, V (London: John Rivington, R. Balwin etc, 1757), 370–76. This text is a translation into English of the Latin text of 1708.

32 Boerhaave, V 308, 310–12.

33 Once in his Academical Lectures, and as one of his many footnotes to its aphorisms, Boerhaave admits that in some cases ‘a disease may be endemical, or peculiar to a certain people’, Boerhaave V, 370.

34 Flückinger remarks on how they found ‘in der Brust’ of the oldest victim, the 60-year old Milica ‘viel liquides Gebluth’, and also notices the ‘viel Frisches Geblut’ in the sixth-listed victim Ruscha, and the seventh as well (the setter’s spelling is not consistent) – Johannes Flückinger et al, Visum et Repertum uber die so genannte Vampirs, oder Blut-Aussaugers, so zu Medvegia in Servien, an der Türkischer Graniz, an 7. Jan 1732 geschehen. Rebsteinem Ungang/ Von dem Rauen und Schmassen der Todten in Grabern (Nürnberg: Johann Adam Schmidt, 1732), 7, 8.

35 G. David Keyworth, ‘Was the Vampire of the Eighteenth Century a Unique Type of Undead-corpse?’ Folklore 117, no. 3 (December 2006): 241–260, at 244–5.

36 Boerhaave, V 283.

37 See Rina Knoeff, ‘Herman Boerhaave’s Neurology and the Unchanging Nature of Physiology’, in Blood, Sweat and Tears – The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe, eds. H. F. J. Horstmanshoff, Helen King, and Claus Zittel (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 195–216, 206. Knoeff explains the workings of the nervous system in Boerhaave’s theory from a variety of his works, including the Aphorisms of 1709.

38 Boerhaave V, 270, 263.

39 Jablonski was primarily a theologian, Buddeus a medical doctor and Frisch amongst other things a zoologist. Buddeus had studied under Herman Boerhaave, and was certainly the most expert medically.

40 A copy of the printed Opinion (as Mézes shorthands this), by Buddeus, Frisch and Jablonski, is to be found in Klaus Hamberger (ed), Mortuus non Mordet: Dokumente zum Vampirismus (Vienna: Turia und Kant, 1992), 49–54. The original handwritten Notes, as Mézes labels them, is to be found in the Preussische Akademie der Wissenschafte in Berlin, under the working title ‘Acta betreffendden vom König angeforderten Bericht wegen der sogenannten Vampire oder Blutaussauger,’ 1732. (Mézes 500).

41 Mézes, 285–86.

42 Boerhaave V, 367.

43 Boerhaave V, 353.

44 Boerhaave V, 372.

45 Boerhaave V, 436.

46 Flückinger et al., 7, 6.

47 Flückinger et al., 10.

48 The actual meaning of balsamlich, as an adjective, could either mean oily or fragrant.

49 It is possible that he had read a longer copy of the Visum et Repertum, longer than the version printed by Schmidt in Nürnberg 1732, which now constitutes the earliest copy of the text since none of the other earlier versions are available. Sadly, this can only be speculation.

50 Mézes, 288.

51 Mézes, 288.

52 John Henry, ‘The Matter of Souls: Medical Theory and Theology in Seventeenth-century England’, in The Medical Revolution of the Seventeenth Century, eds. Roger French, and Andrew Wear (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 87–113, at 92.

53 Henry More, The Immortality of the Soul, so Farre Forth as it is Demonstrable from the Knowledge of Nature and the Light of Reason, 5 vols (London: William Morden, 1659), II Ch. 15. 267–77.

54 John Henry, ‘A Cambridge Platonist’s Materialism: Henry More and the Concept of Soul’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49 (1986): 172–195, at 193–94. Henry shows conclusively the extent to which More’s elemental philosophy and belief in souls incarnating in different elements contradicts his professed Neoplatonism.

55 Boerhaave describes this process particularly in relation to the action of yawning, in which ‘a larger Quantity of Spirits are secerned’ after ‘a greater Quantity of Blood is sent to the Encephalus’. Boerhaave V, 25. Despite seeing animal spirits as being part of the body’s physiology, it is telling that in his lectures he only refers to them very rarely, preferring to centre on the physical and demonstrable aspects of the body.

56 Knoeff, 204, 206.

57 Mézes 91–92.

58 Mézes 146

59 Mézes, 34. As Mézes shows, the two letters written by Haack around this time, ‘Coerem magnetism naturalis, sympathetica mumialis,’ 10 March 1728, and another of 1732 on the Medvedia Vampires to Georg Ernst Stahl (which actually employs the term magia posthuma (Mézes 144–45)), tell us little about who Haack in fact was.

60 Michael Ranfft, Tractat von dem Kauen und Schmatzen in der Todten in Grabern (Leipzig: A. Martinus, 1734), 24. Koen Vermeir, ‘Vampirisme, corps mastiquants et la force de l’imagination: analyse des premiers traités sur les vampires’, Camenae 8 (2010): 1–16, at 9–13.

61 Manfred Engel, ‘The Dream in Eighteenth-Century Encyclopedias’, in The Dream and the Enlightenment/ Le Rève et les Lumières, eds. Bernard Dieterle and Manfred Engel (Paris: Champion 2003), 22.

62 Johann C. Nöbling, Dissertatio Physica de Cadaveribus Sanguisugis von denen so genannten Vampyren oder Menschensaugern [Concerning the Blood-Sucking Corpses of those so-called Vampires or People-Suckers] (Jena: Leutenberg-Scwarzenberg, 1732), 13–16.

63 Shaw and Gibson, ‘Slaying Vampires in Eighteenth Century Sweden’, 755–57.

64 Nils (Nicolaus) Retzius, Demonstratio Inauguralis de Vampiris, non Vampiris, sed producto quodam morbosa, INCUBI nominee dudum noto [‘Inaugural Lecture on Vampires, which are not Vampires, but, produced by a certain disease, which has long been known by the name of the INCUBUS [nightmare]’] (Lund: Decreax, 1737), 2.

65 Joachim Östlund, ‘Egyptian Mummies, Medicine and the Supernatural in Eighteenth-Century Sweden’, in The Enduring Fantastic: Essays on Imagination and Western Culture, eds. A. Höglund and C. Trenter (McFarland, 2021), 37–48, at 43–44, 46.

66 Johan Leche, Disputatio historico-medica de mumia Ægyptiaca, quam consensu facultatis medicæ sub præsidio … Joh. Jac. von Döbeln … in academiæ Carolinæ auditor (Lund: University of Lund, 1739), 6–7.

67 Leche, 7–8. Östlund 2021, 43–44.