New research published this month in the journal Analytical Chemistry details how an innovative protein analysis technique has uncovered a rich bevvy of biochemical evidence about the life and health of the most famous (alleged) vampire in history — indeed, the inspiration for Count Dracula himself.
His sweating fist cantering across the surface of Romanian rag paper in swooping lines of 15th Century Latin as steadily as his armies swept through the Carpathian mountains, we know for certain that Vlad Drăculea — merciless defender of Wallachia, harbinger of an estimated 80,000 deaths — wept and bled into the very ink of his hand-written letters. But now it seems that Vlad the Impaler, namesake of Bram Stoker's 1897 epistolary horror, may have even wept literal tears of blood, as described in the oldest stories about him.
