Clinical Vampirism

Clinical vampirism is the obsession with drinking blood. This condition is also more popularly known as Renfield’s syndrome after R.M. Renfield, the fictional character in the 1887 Gothic horror novel, “Dracula” by Bram Stoker. In the story, Renfield was Dracula’s follower who ate live insects and small animals and later on drank human blood. Similarly, an individual with clinical vampirism initially manifests the compulsion to consume insects, live animals, or drink animal blood. During the worst stages of the condition, the individual feels the compulsion to drink human blood. Sample cases include a woman who drinks her husband’s blood from his cut arm before sex and a criminal who murdered a girl, drank her blood, ate a part of her heart, and mutilated her genitals.