Editor's Note: during recent refurbishment of an old house in Boston, Massachusetts, workmen unearthed a singular cache of journals and letters purportedly written or received by a former inhabitant, one Professor Jonathan Donne. The cache had been so well-hidden originally that its hiding place behind a wall panel in the former residence was unknowingly painted over when the house was sold for deliquent taxes and converted to apartments in the early 1930's. Regretably, a combination of nesting mice and leaking plumbing over the years had reduced most of the trove to a scattered mass of waterstained and -matted fragments by the time of their discovery. Fortunately, however, one of the workmen--a student from Miskatonic University (Arkham, Massachusetts), holding a construction job that summer to help pay college tuition--noted the MU letterhead on a number of fragmentary letters. With his foreman's permission, he therefore secured the cache and turned it over to University officials.
What follows is a reconstructed dialogue based on those letters between Prof. Donne and one Herbert West, who was attending Miskatonic medical school at that time (fortunately, the Professor apparently made copies of his correspondence to West so such a reconstruction was possible). From this dialogue it would appear that the medical school's Ethical Oversight Board was already aware of Dr. West's early investigations into the mechanisms, properties and processes of Death; and that a third party known only by the codename "Supermouse" was also involved. That the nameless patient ("H.A.") mentioned in these letters was actually a vampire is, of course, patently absurd.
Interestingly enough, however, Dr. West disappeared under mysterious circumstances shortly after World War I, while Prof. Donne never returned from his sabbatical to the Carpathian Mountains, where he was apparently researching material for a proposed book provisionally titled "The Vampire in Myth and History". The fate of their co-conspirator, "Supermouse", is unknown.

DONNE: something for everyone to think about when they consider taking on the life of the undead: long life in a brain with cerebellar and tertiary functions only! I think you may have something there: A Scientifick Treetise On The Brayne Deade...(sample size n=1.) But seriously, I have a feeling that a book like that would sell like hotcakes: vampirism and pop psychology mixed into one pot...end of first letter fragment.

WEST: I've been having some fun thinking about how The Undeade Brayne might work. My first thought is that we should focus our discussion on the reticular activating system (RAS). The RAS would seem, to me, to be the site through which the vampire's waking and deathlike sleep states are mediated.

WEST: "...now we come to the RAS, or Reticular Activating System. Part of the Reticular Formation, the RAS appears to serve the function of bringing the organism from sleep to wakefulness, and vice-versa, as confirmed by lesion and stimulation studies in lower animals. Such a function appears to also take place in the case of the Long-Lived Person (LLP aka "vampire"). Interestingly, However, RAS malfunction tends to occur in LLP's, presumably as a result of their transformation from living to unliving. The LLP's RAS (Neo-RAS) undergoes a rapid re-structuring of synaptic connections, ultimately leading to (1) a reversal of the day/night sleep cycle, and (2) an unusually sound (i.e. "deathlike") sleep.

WEST: While it is generally known that the RAS has the ability to "learn" about benign versus out of the ordinary stimuli, such that it can bring the organism to wakefulness when the latter appears in the environment, in the case of the LLP the transformed RAS appears to delete most of it's data base, and add several new 'wake-up' stimuli. Specifically, the Neo-RAS will awaken the LLP when the following stimuli are presented:

WEST: In the case of our test subject (H.A.), the Neo-RAS was so degraded that he rarely, if ever, appeared to actually be awake."

WEST: A second area of the undeade brayne which should be investigated thoroughly is the hypothalamus, known for its involvement in such behaviors as feeding, sex, temperature regulation, and regulation of the production of endocrine hormones (such as adrenalin)...end of second letter fragment.

DONNE: Have you yet proceeded to examine H.A.'s hypothalamus?...end of third letter fragment.

WEST: I recommend that you focus your investigation first on the lateral portion of H.A.'s hypothalamus. Some early research by Anand and Brobeck (1911) suggested that lesions in this area may produce aphagia (inability to eat and chew). While this ultimately leads to death in the laboratory animal, there may be unusual mediating factors involved in the undeade brayne which circumvent this aphagic condition by creating a craving for liquid proteins, such as blood.

WEST: Another area of H.A.'s hypothalamus to which I suggest you attend is the posterior portion. It has long been known that aberrations in this area can result in extreme sleepiness in many species of animals. Might this include vampires? A further clue might be taken from work done by Golani et al (1909) in which it is shown that this sleepiness is due more to a loss of voluntary movement rather than disruption of the sleep center. Perhaps you should commence with sleep studies via EEG. Check for REM sleep in particular, as it has been an ongoing debate here as to whether or not vampires dream...end of fourth letter fragment.

DONNE: The details of brain function and change are really quite fascinating, but for those of a scatological turn of mind, would you care to spculate on exactly where the waste products (fluid and otherwise) might go?...end of fifth letter fragment.

WEST: Based on previous observations by Supermouse et al that biopsies of H.A.'s internal organs (specifically, liver, kidneys, spleen and lung) turned to dust shortly after being removed from the body, we immediately placed punch biopsies of the liver in sterile petri dishes and washed them with a variety of solutions in the hopes of maintaining tissue viability. Saline, acid wash and human plasma had no effect on tissue disintegration. However, bovine blood delayed the disintegration for 12 hours, previously-procured human blood (obtained from the blood bank) delayed disintegration for 24 hours, and freshly-procured blood (obtained directly from this researcher) prevented disintegration totally and, furthermore, delayed any visible signs of tissue distress for 36 hours.

WEST: Due to the objections of the Ethical Committee, however, we were unable to obtain large amounts of tissue from our UnLiving subject and, therefore, we were unable to further investigate this phenomenon. It is our hypothesis that the organs which comprise the body of the LLP, although similar in in gross appearance to that of the normal human, may have undergone tissue alteration in such a way as to require continual innoculation with whole blood in order to maintain viability. This hypothesis is based on the fact that, in each instance where blood was used to wash the tissue sample, all presence of the blood components (including RBCs) disappeared from the petri dish within 6 hours after introduction, leaving no residue whatsoever.

WEST: Further research is needed to determine the method (i.e., osmosis, absorption, phagocytosis) by which the tissue of the LLP 'consumes' blood and leaves no waste products for elimination.

WEST: In addition, it should be noted that, while animal and stored human blood delayed disintegration of H.A.'s tissue, only fresh human blood prevented it... even after we ceased the innoculations. Our hypothesis is that, while the tissue of the LLP (and, thus, the LLP body in general) can subsist on alternate blood sources, there is some component (henceforth referred to as 'lifeforce') of fresh human blood which counters the disintegration process. Again, further research is needed to determine both the nature of this lifeforce and the method by which it affects the tissues of the LLP...end of sixth letter fragment.

DONNE: Keep me informed of anything interesting you might learn. I appreciate the ability to share in the knowledge you are gaining from the study of such an interesting subject...end of seventh letter fragment

Disclaimer: the above material actually appeared in the newsgroup alt.vampyres first as the thread "Vampires and Science" (26 Sep 96) and then continued as "The Undead Brayne" (4 Oct 96). This material is presented here strictly by way of background information which might prove useful in a Call of Cthulhu RPG scenario. No infringement of copyright is either implied nor intended by this editor through this presentation.

RETURN TO THE STACKS THROUGH THE GLOWING SIGIL, below

This Page Created 26 December 1997
This page revised 28 August 2007