#dr steward

[thediscsystem]

A request from a good friend. I'm taking art requests by the way, not just for Of Monsters and Mainframes but I would love those specifically

[incapacitated-till-caffeinated]

The history sorrounding the use of garlic in deterring vampires is actually really fascinating.

First off, the smell of garlic was known to deter bats. Especially in southern America (which is the only place that vampire bats are native to).

So despite there being no actual blood sucking possible vampire, bats, in South East Europe, there was another reason to repel them.

On the rare occasion that someone would get bitten by a bat, they were pretty likely to catch something. Especially rabies, which was pretty prominent in bats in the 1800s.

Rabies itself was huge during the 1800s and early 1900s. It was epidemic and caused mass hysteria. And people didn't understand it.

In Dracula, Bram stoker's first descriptions of Lucy when she is being bitten every night are actually pretty consistent with early rabies.

The signs were, lack of appetite, headache and weakness. Which were often put up to hysteria.

In earlier renditions of vampires, they can also not cross running water, and more popularly do not like sunlight, which are both symptoms of late rabies.

*side note. Blood transfusions actually could have help reduce symptoms, and in some cases cure rabies. But only if you were lucky enough to get a transfusion off of someone who already had the antibodies.

So besides rabies, garlic is a massive antibiotic, and is actually effective against bacteria, fungi and viruses.

This actually originated from Egypt, garlic was thought to have magical healing properties. Often Egyptians were buried with garlic stuffed in their mouths, to prevent evil spirits. (Diseases, but could be interpreted as rising from the dead and being a vampire) .

So to conclude people. Eat your garlic.

[hauntedliz]

Sometimes a friend group is an unethical sad boy with a large mental asylum, a cowboy, and just some guy

[dovesandmagpies]

In which Lucy receives three proposals in one afternoon,

And they all lived happily ever after.....

[quietlywatchingwritingreading]

Thinking about today’s entry more and more, and i’m increasingly convinced this is some sort of influence directly by Dracula. 

Dr. Steward gave the audio dates each day, but in his mind Steward truly thinks that a week has past. Even in the single day, he starts talking about other days having past, even though it hasn’t, and he’s still on the same recording.  

We also know on previous entries, he was willing to consider a little bit of mad science, but held himself back. That there was too much risk to others(like the theoretical cats), or for his ethics.  He felt that there was ultimately no good outcome from following though on those experiment. So him vaguely thinking of a plan like ‘let him escape and do something/follow him around’ might be a thought Steward might naturally have had, but its a thought that he normally wouldn’t go though with.  Its why his assistants seam to be acting strangely: they’re following orders, but these orders aren’t making sense.  Something else, presumably Dracula, is encouraging these actions. 

Being an audio log instead of a diary, might also effect how quickly Dr. Steward himself might realize something’s wrong. how often does he review his own audio logs, compared to a diary where one can look back to the previous page/date, and go “huh. Somethings going on here.” I’ve seen some meta posts mention about Dracula using what was modern technology in order to add to the horror (such as the searchlights not seeing though his magical darkness) , and if that’s the case, then maybe in this case this was intentional. Something to add to the reader’s horror. 

 I don’t know for certain as I don’t know when the books originally presented this information. It might be that we caught on that the dates are incorrect because we’re reading in Chronological Order, but maybe in the original text we were supposed to get August 20′th earlier, and then later got August 19′th and realize something was amiss. Anyone with the actual book/have read the intended order know about that? 

[lukewarmbrain]

I can’t believe people thought that the texan cowboy would be a bigger shock to dracula daily readers than victorian spiders georg

[darkiecat]

The inherent homoeroticism of sucking poison out of a wound

[muppetfreak]

I'm behind, but did we discuss Van Helsing and Jack referring to the bitten child they went to visit as "it"?

Because I just thought that was really frickin' weird.