Vampire or Too Much Corn?
In Chapter 1 of Bram Stroker’s Dracula, Jonathan Harker travels into a thickly wooded Transylvania to help the mysterious Count Dracula purchase real estate in England. Along the way, he stops at a local inn and unwittingly uncovers the source of the Count’s vampiric powers in . . . a warm bowl of corn porridge.
What? You don’t remember that part of the story. You may not realize it, and neither did Mr. Harker, but corn is incredibly important to the myth of vampirism.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Europeans started to import a new staple crop from America, corn or maize. Maize supplied more calories than the rye and wheat Europeans previously grown, and it quickly became an important source of energy for peasants. While Europeans imported the plant, they neglected to import the methods for preparing maize. Native Americans had prepared corn for thousands of years using a process called “nixtamalization.” Essentially, they boiled kernels with an alkali substance, either ash or mineral lime. The process made it easier to grind kernels into flour, but nixtamalization also released important nutrients, calcium and niacin, a form of vitamin B.
European peasants grew and consumed lots of corn, but because they never used nixtamalization, they eventually ended up with vitamin B deficiencies, resulting in a disease called “pellagra.” Victims of pellagra become hypersensitive to sunlight, with exposed areas of skin becoming depigmented and scaly. Lips and tongue swell, becoming blood red and cracked. Tooth imprints in the swollen tongue suggest the victim’s teeth are sharper than in reality. Without vitamin B, neurons in the brain start to degrade. Victims develop forms of dementia associated with insomnia, aggression, anxiety and depression. Pica, is another potential symptom as the vitamin-deprived individual unconsciously starts to eat odd things in an attempt gain nutrients. As the mucus membrane of the digestive tract is lost, victims experience trouble eating and often become emaciated. Death can occur suddenly or slowly over years, and whole household could be affected because of a shared diet.
To a medical doctor, pellagra was a dietary disease. To country peasants, it was a supernatural scourge. They attributed the symptoms of eating too much corn to a blood-sucking demon of the night, and they passed all this lore on to Bram Stroker, who immortalized it in his novel.
So if you invite a polite, pale man with a funny accent into your home this Halloween, don’t offer him your neck. Get that man a One-A-Day® vitamin supplement! And maybe lay off the corn for a while.
Brian Rutter, PhD, is the cofounder of Thing in a Pot Productions and a postdoctoral researcher in plant biology at Indiana University. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our “Things About Things – Odd Facts About Plants” and video production tips in your inbox every month!
Works Cited:
Hampl, Jeffrey S., and William S. Hampl. "Pellagra and the origin of a myth: evidence from European literature and folklore." Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 90.11 (1997): 636-639.
Peres, Tanya M. “Malnourished: Cultural ignorance paved the way for pellagra.” Gravy, Fall 2016, pp. 18-20.