In his 1897 novel about the most famous vampire in history, Bram Stoker mentions blood or the color red more than 200 times, sometimes when discussing Dracula’s eyes. “The last thing I saw was the Count blowing me a kiss, with a triumphant red twinkle in his eyes and a smile that would have made Judas proud in Hell.” For example, one of the protagonists, Jonathan Harker, declaimed like this before being left alone in the castle in the Carpathians with the “sisters”, three vampires expecting “kisses for all”, because Harker “fled out of loyalty to him”. Fiancée Mina— was “young and strong”.
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Did Vlad Dracula, the cruel 15th-century European prince who inspired the book, have hemolacria (blood in his tears)? Or was it just a literary device by Stoker to allude to sexual desire and Eros and Thanatos in conservative Victorian England (and which ultimately forced cinema’s most famous Dracula, Christopher Lee, to act in red contact lenses, which he hated)? Two Israeli businessmen from the field of biotechnology and two Italian chemists are currently looking, among other things, for the answer in the proteins that Vlad Dracula left behind by signing three letters half a millennium ago.
The word Dragulya can be seen on the signature of one of the documents kept in the National Archives of Romania and on the red wax seal of another. He was one of the pseudonyms (after his father Vlad Dracul) of Vlad III, also known as The Impaler (Tepes in Romanian) for his penchant for killing Transylvanian Saxons and Ottomans in this way. Born in Transylvania in 1431, he ruled with an iron fist and shifting alliances over Wallachia, a now-defunct principality in present-day Romania.
Letter signed by Vlad Dracula, one of the analyzed documents Gleb Zilberstein
In one of the letters from 1475, shortly before his death on the battlefield, he introduced himself as “Prince of the Transalpine Regions” when he informed the citizens of the Transylvanian city of Sibiu that he would settle there. By then, stories were already circulating about his brutality as commander of neighboring Wallachia, including one about how the frightened Ottomans discovered a “forest of poles”. In Romania, he is considered a national hero who defended his country in a difficult time when few ruled with thoughtfulness.
Three years ago, Israelis Gleb and Svetlana Zilberstein, both 53, and Italians Pier Giorgio Righetti, 81, and Vincenzo Cunsolo, 60, were given permission to analyze the documents using a system designed “without damaging” the present proteins collects through contact with any part of the body, sweat, saliva or tears. Under the right conditions, they can remain there for up to millions of years. “No part of the object needs to be ripped out, and proteins are more stable than DNA, which degrades more over time,” explains Gleb Zilberstein at a cafeteria in Tel Aviv, Israel, from where he and Svetlana immigrated 26 years ago Kazakhstan. He has a master’s degree in physics and she has one in economics, but they are neither classical academics nor do they have a university teaching position. Rather, as Gleb admits, they are “your typical Israeli high-tech entrepreneurs.” Righetti, on the other hand, is professor emeritus of chemistry at the Polytechnic University of Milan, while Cunsolo teaches organic chemistry in Catania.
Svetlana and Gleb Zilberstein, in Tel Aviv last week. Antonio whistles
The system consists of ionized plastics on the surface that are deposited on the object. They absorb proteins, other biomolecules, and metals that can provide clues about diseases, medicines, food, and even the environment in which Dracula lived. “We work in two directions. On the one hand, biological markers that develop in the human body. On the other hand, proteins from microbes,” says Gleb.
They like to call it “chemistry history”. “We are not detectives, although it can be used for forensic analysis,” says Svetlana. The method can be used to determine whether a protein comes from a human, a rat or a mosquito that landed on the document. Also date. That is, to distinguish whether the human proteins in the part of the letter where Vlad Dracula stamped his signature are from that period or later. There is always, yes, an attribution point to assuming that this biological marker actually corresponds to Dracula, because everything seems to point to it. “It helps that the paper was made from cotton fibers back then, it holds up very well,” says Svetlana. In any case, according to the preliminary results of the tests, few hands have touched these documents since the 15th century.
Disease determines behavior
The Zilbersteins bite their tongues not to reveal their conclusions about Vlad III. They refuse to do so until confirmed in Italy, although they state that two of the 10 human proteins attributed to Vlad Dracula indicate pathologies. Among those they’ve been looking for are atherosclerosis — the hardening of the arteries that can clog the veins in the retina — or conjunctivitis, which is so acute it produces blood in the tears. “If we have information about specific diseases, we can provide material for historians to speculate on. Diseases dictate behavior,” emphasizes Gleb. They don’t address the cause of death as that is already known (fighting Ottoman forces) and the body was never found.
They tend to focus on famous historical or literary figures. And they are documented prior to biological analysis to know what clues to look for and to be able to link history and chemistry. On this occasion, Dracula was chosen because “he’s an ideal character to understand the political games of the time,” says Gleb. “We wanted to know who it was. A true dictator or a victim of the politico-military situation? It is also interesting from a medical point of view, he adds, because of the numerous legends about his illnesses and because of the study of the climatic conditions and the bacterial universe before Christopher Columbus arrived in America.
Still from the film “Dracula, by Bram Stoker” by Francis Ford Coppola (1992). cordon press
The first joint mission of the four scientists was the original manuscript of a 20th-century roman à clef: The Master and Margarita, to which Mikhail Bulgakov devoted the last years of his life. Analysis revealed biological evidence that the author, who had practiced medicine, was taking large amounts of morphine and painkillers for a kidney condition called nephrotic syndrome. In another investigation, they found traces of gold, silver, mercury, and lead in a manuscript about the moon by Johannes Kepler, leading them to believe that the prominent German astronomer and mathematician combined the scientific method with alchemy, still popular in early Europe combined. XVII century.
“We generate data to destroy paradigms. We put them on the table and open a debate,” Gleb sums up. For example, historians already agree that George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm and 1984, died of tuberculosis in 1950. In 2018, after analyzing a letter he sent to Moscow, they added a conclusion: that he contracted the disease in the hospital where he was recovering from a gunshot during the Spanish Civil War, where Orwell was on Republican sides fought. Russian Anton Chekhov also had tuberculosis, but they believe he died of a stroke because of a protein found in one of his tests.
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