ATAVISM AND CRIME 



ful body or brain, would be more likely than the 

 stronger and better one, to be the object of rever- 

 sion. In this manner the habits of mind of the sav- 

 ages of early ages at times reappear in their late de- 

 scendants ; even the almost feral lives that once were 

 led, come before us like Vampires * from their far off 

 graves. What are called monstrosities, are those un- 

 fortunate creatures among animals in whose antenatal 

 growth some obstruction or malposition has sent into 

 the world deficient in conformation, or joining in dis- 

 torted structure two bodies partly into one. So also 

 are born persons whose brains and mental forces are 

 more or less deformed, not in the manner that all 



* Belief in the Vampire Superstition, though long before existing, 

 spread in the early part of the 17th Century like an epidemic, from 

 Moravia, Hungary and Poland throughout all Northern Europe, 

 where it still exists. In West Prussia and in Pomerania as late as 

 1871 numerous lawsuits arose in consequence thereof. It is believed 

 that the ghost rises from the graves where certain dead are buried, 

 visits people in their sleep, especially those of its own family, sucks 

 their blood, so that, after repeated visits, they sicken and die. Those 

 who have been thus attacked and have died, become themselves Vam- 

 pires and cause other deaths. On opening the grave of a Vampire 

 the body, though long interred, appears like a fresh corpse, ruddy 

 and filled with blood. No exorcism or priestly rites are of avail. 

 The nocturnal visits will continue until the corpse is disinterred, the 

 head cut off and a wooden stake driven through the body. Crema- 

 tion is also effectual. (See Dissertations sur les Revenants, par R. P. 

 Dom Augustin Calmet. P. 273. Paris, 1746, also Meyer's Kon. 

 Lex., 1897.) 



The name applied to certain large bats which are thought to suck 

 the blood of sleeping persons is borrowed from this gruesome super- 

 stition. The word itself is of Servian origin. 



357 



