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Dracula Readthrough 2025, 20 July

CHAPTER VI

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

20 July.---Visited Renfield very early, before the attendant went his rounds. Found him up and humming a tune. He was spreading out his sugar, which he had saved, in the window, and was manifestly beginning his fly-catching again; and beginning it cheerfully and with a good grace. I looked around for his birds, and not seeing them, asked him where they were. He replied, without turning round, that they had all flown away. There were a few feathers about the room and on his pillow a drop of blood. I said nothing, but went and told the keeper to report to me if there were anything odd about him during the day.

11 a. m.---The attendant has just been to me to say that Renfield has been very sick and has disgorged a whole lot of feathers. "My belief is, doctor," he said, "that he has eaten his birds, and that he just took and ate them raw!"

11 p. m.---I gave Renfield a strong opiate to-night, enough to make even him sleep, and took away his pocket-book to look at it. The thought that has been buzzing about my brain lately is complete, and the theory proved. My homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind. I shall have to invent a new classification for him, and call him a zoöphagous (life-eating) maniac; what he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way. He gave many flies to one spider and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a cat to eat the many birds. What would have been his later steps? It would almost be worth while to complete the experiment. It might be done if there were only a sufficient cause. Men sneered at vivisection, and yet look at its results to-day! Why not advance science in its most difficult and vital aspect---the knowledge of the brain? Had I even the secret of one such mind---did I hold the key to the fancy of even one lunatic---I might advance my own branch of science to a pitch compared with which Burdon-Sanderson's physiology or Ferrier's brain-knowledge would be as nothing. If only there were a sufficient cause! I must not think too much of this, or I may be tempted; a good cause might turn the scale with me, for may not I too be of an exceptional brain, congenitally?

How well the man reasoned; lunatics always do within their own scope. I wonder at how many lives he values a man, or if at only one. He has closed the account most accurately, and to-day begun a new record. How many of us begin a new record with each day of our lives?

To me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended with my new hope, and that truly I began a new record. So it will be until the Great Recorder sums me up and closes my ledger account with a balance to profit or loss. Oh, Lucy, Lucy, I cannot be angry with you, nor can I be angry with my friend whose happiness is yours; but I must only wait on hopeless and work. Work! work!

If I only could have as strong a cause as my poor mad friend there---a good, unselfish cause to make me work---that would be indeed happiness.

Fun fact:

Throughout the typed manuscript for the novel, Stoker crosses out the word "keeper," replacing it with "attendant."

On vivisection

William Thornley Stoker, Bram's brother, was the Inspector for Vivisection in Ireland from 1879 through the early 1900s. In his 1888 article "On a Case of Subcranial Hæmorrhage treated by Secondary Trephining", he defended David Ferrier's use of vivisection. He claimed that Ferrier's cranial maps, which had been created using observations of vivisected animals, were crucial in allowing him to perform a life saving trephination. It should be noted, however, that Thornley was also known for his work in opposition to vivisection as a routine part of medical training, feeling that the practice should be limited to instances of research. His general viewpoint, that medical experimentation producing some measure of harm must have a sufficient and pressing cause, appears to be shared by Seward.

And on "I must not think too much of this, or I may be tempted; a good cause might turn the scale with me, for may not I too be of an exceptional brain, congenitally?"

Seward implies here that both he and Renfield may be in possession of "exceptional" brains. While this claim might initially appear to be exemplary of the young doctor's arrogance in presuming his own congenital superiority, such a statement might have had chilling undertones when taken with some of the views linking insanity and genius in the late 19th century. In 1892, Scottish philosopher John Ferguson Nesbit posited in his The Insanity of Genius that genius was a species of nervous disorder similar to insanity, and Lombroso also connected exceptional aptitude or intelligence to degenerative psychosis. Seward's comparison here may be meant to imply that both he and Renfield have minds that are similarly removed in degree from those of "normal" men.

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Fun fact:
Throughout the typed manuscript for the novel, Stoker crosses out the word "keeper," replacing it with "attendant."
On vivisection
William Thornley Stoker, Bram's brother, was the Inspector for Vivisection in Ireland from 1879 through the early 1900s. In his 1888 article "On a Case of Subcranial Hæmorrhage treated by Secondary Trephining", he defended David Ferrier's use of vivisection. He claimed that Ferrier's cranial maps, which had been created using observations of vivisected animals, were crucial in allowing him to perform a life saving trephination. It should be noted, however, that Thornley was also known for his work in opposition to vivisection as a routine part of medical training, feeling that the practice should be limited to instances of research. His general viewpoint, that medical experimentation producing some measure of harm must have a sufficient and pressing cause, appears to be shared by Seward.
And on "I must not think too much of this, or I may be tempted; a good cause might turn the scale with me, for may not I too be of an exceptional brain, congenitally?"
Seward implies here that both he and Renfield may be in possession of "exceptional" brains. While this claim might initially appear to be exemplary of the young doctor's arrogance in presuming his own congenital superiority, such a statement might have had chilling undertones when taken with some of the views linking insanity and genius in the late 19th century. In 1892, Scottish philosopher John Ferguson Nesbit posited in his The Insanity of Genius that genius was a species of nervous disorder similar to insanity, and Lombroso also connected exceptional aptitude or intelligence to degenerative psychosis. Seward's comparison here may be meant to imply that both he and Renfield have minds that are similarly removed in degree from those of "normal" men.
Is this mfer going to give his patient a cat to eat? WHAT A MONSTER! One can only hope that Dracula shows up soon to defeat him...