Dracula for Doctors
Medical Facts and Gothic Fantasies

Explores the connection between medicine and gothic literature examining disease, psychiatry and supernatural in the nineteenth century.

Fiona Subotsky (Author)

9781911623298, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 31 October 2019

216 pages
23.4 x 15.7 x 1 cm, 0.34 kg

'Whether your interest is that of the folkloric or the literary variety of fan, this is a well-informed and well-researched read.' Deborah Wyde, Fortean Times

Exploring how medicine and psychiatry are portrayed in gothic literature, this engaging book illustrates how Stoker's famous work was influenced by nineteenth-century attitudes to disease and medicine and reveals many previously unknown links. Extracts from many sensational stories of the time are presented, and the role of doctors and their appearance and contribution to gothic fiction is investigated. The book covers topics such as asylums, their purpose, practice and patients, deadly diseases echoing the symptoms of vampirism, and the otherworldly allure of the undead. Dracula for Doctors is an entertaining and informative examination of how Victorian medical knowledge and culture informed Stoker's gothic masterpiece. This book suggests that Stoker, who had many medical connections, was able to link lurid stories of operations and asylums with fictional horror and suspense. Fans of gothic literature, as well as those of medical history and the supernatural, will find this an enjoyable read.

Preface
Foreword
1. Body and mind
2. Medico-gothic
3. Stoker medical circles
4. Asylum doctors
5. The gothic asylum
6. Renfield, the pet lunatic
7. The other patients
8. Diagnosing Dracula
9. Dread, disease and the asylum
10. Occult blood
11. Holes in the skull
12. Dead, alive or undead
13. Therapeutic armamentarium
14. Compelling eyes
15. Beastliness
16. Vivisection or animal torture?
17. Demons and doctors
18. Scientists and the supernatural
19. And Dracula for dentists …
20. Sex and death
Index.

Subject Areas: Psychiatry [MMH], History of medicine [MBX], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]