How a pandemic made Dracula more relevant than ever

In a dramatic scene halfway through Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Arthur Holmwood leans down to give his fiancée, Lucy Westenra, one final kiss. For several torturous nights, the young woman has been having her blood drained by a mysterious force; now she's on her deathbed. But before Arthur can kiss his beloved goodbye, the doctor Abraham Van Helsing intercedes and hurls him across the room, aware that anyone who touches Lucy risks catching whatever horror has afflicted her. Van Helsing’s instinct is vindicated a moment later as a “spasm as of rage” crosses Lucy’s face and the dying woman starts to gnash her unusually sharp teeth — the first signs of her transformation into a fully-fledged vampire. A moment later, Lucy returns from the un-dead and thanks Van Helsing for protecting her fiancé.

Vampirism, as Lucy's untimely demise makes clear, is more than an eldritch curse. It’s a disease, one that spreads via contact between the sick and the healthy, not unlike the viruses scientists were just beginning to discover as Stoker was drafting his groundbreaking Gothic horror novel in the 1890s. In fact, Dracula is so rich in references to 19th century medicine and the fast-evolving science of infectious disease that one scholar described it as “the most significant fictional intervention in the 19th century’s debates” on how contagions spread.

But Dracula isn’t just a window into arcane medical disputes: It’s also a primer for understanding many aspects of our modern relationship with disease, from the anti-vax movement to how pandemics stoke xenophobia and racism.