The human imagination is a powerful tool, one we often use to scare ourselves. Around Halloween, we start thinking about werewolves, vampires and zombies. It turns out, there are rare medical conditions that may have inspired some of our best Halloween lore. We revisit an interview from 2015 with Dr. Andrew Mazz Marry, in the bioscience department at Minnesota State University Moorhead. ~~~ Immigrants are coming to North Dakota for jobs. Not everyone is glad to see them. We share a report from NPR’s Joel Rose. ~~~ Grand Fork’s Career Impact Academy will house classes for instruction and training in high-demand occupations such as advanced manufacturing, aerospace and unmanned aircraft systems, automotive services, building trades, computer science and information technology, culinary arts, engineering and robotics, health sciences and precision technologies — and, in a second phase, welding.
Dr. Andrew Mazz Marry (transcript)
Ashley Thornberg: We start our conversation with one of our most popular shape shifting characters.
Dr. Mazz Marry: It's actually a genetic disorder. It's caused by a disease called congenital hypertrichosis. Now, we have thousands of hairs that we don't notice on our body, all over our body…This disease actually causes all of those hairs to develop like the ones on the top of a head, or if you're a male, when you grow stubble and a beard, so your entire face is covered by hair. So you actually do look like a werewolf.
It was originally first noted in 1648. Of course back then no one knew anything about science. These people come into villages and people are scared of them…There was the first known serial killer in Germany called Peter Stamp who…was also a cannibal, so he killed and ate people…He had this condition, so everyone was afraid of anybody else that had this particular condition. As far as I could work out, the legend of why werewolves could only be killed by silver bullets is because at the time silver was considered very pure and a mark of the divine. Crosses were melted from churches to make into bullets and they'd go out and shoot these people, but all we had was a genetic condition that made them grow hair all over the body. And one of the weird things is, especially with male sufferers…when they go through male pattern baldness, all the excess hair falls off them and they look completely normal.
Ashley Thornberg: So you take this combination where there is excessive hair growth, and in the case of Peter, the desire to consume flesh, and out comes the werewolf- but there's always this moon phase to it - that they come out with a full moon. Do you know how the moon got attached to this?
Dr. Mazz Marry: I think it was the lunar cycle and the fact…when there is a full moon, you can see more at night. So if someone who had this condition was trying to stay out of sight, it was harder for them because people could see them more. And I think that's how everything with the silver and the full moon got married into this werewolf thing.
Ashley Thornberg: Can we treat congenital hypertrichosis easily today?
Dr. Mazz Marry: There is actually no treatment. What they actually just try and do is give you chemicals that remove excess hair and you're supposed to apply them. But a lot of people who have this genetic disorder, when they become happy in their own selves, they go, “You know what? I'm different.” They seem to just leave it and say, “Yep, this is who I am.” Which is a lesson I think we should all take for what we look like.
Ashley Thornberg: There's another disease that I read about in doing research on this and it seems to me that it's giving rise to a few different myths. Porphyria. Describe what that is.
Dr. Mazz Marry: That is a genetic disorder where you can't make hemoglobin, which is the major molecule that a lot of people just think carries oxygen but it also buffers our biological pH. It's also involved in allowing us to keep a constant body temperature, so it's a heat sink in itself. The whole thing about people going out in the sun who are vampires and catching fire, it's because this thing actually absorbs the heat from the sun and expands it into the body - so it's actually like you're microwaving yourself. If you go out in the sun with this disease, you do actually start to catch on fire.
Ashley Thornberg: What does someone who has a severe case of porphyria, what can that look like?
Dr. Mazz Marry: Everyone in the Middle Ages was afraid of everything. They didn't have anywhere to live, so they sometimes got burnt during the day. So they'd always have really scabby skin. They'd probably lose their hair. They had bad hygiene. Of course, the idea of big fangs that would slice into people was because your gums receded, so your teeth looked bigger…A weird quirk about human behavior...If your body knows there's something lacking in you, you would actually go and find it and eat it. So these people...for example, the story is that my mum and dad always told me that when she was pregnant with me, she ate lumps of coal. Oh dear! My mum's five foot tall, so she's a wee lass. Two of her sisters did the same thing when they were pregnant with their children. So your body instinctively knows if something's lacking…
These people suffering from porphyria knew there was something wrong with their blood and they'd go around and they'd catch rats, stray cats, and eat the blood because it actually alleviated some of the fears. And the whole thing about garlic is that when you have this genetic disorder, you get carbohydrate cravings. So garlic was stuck on the houses to make someone suffering from this disorder, genetic disease, porphyria, more interested in eating the garlic and staying away from their livestock, which was how they made money. So someone suffering from the disease would go, “Oh, hello, piece of garlic,” and they'd eat it because it's got antibacterial, antifungal properties. It thins your blood. It probably made them feel better.
Ashley Thornberg: I understand porphyria is now diagnosed often with a urine test. Why is that?
Dr. Mazz Marry: The actual disease porphyria comes from the Greek word for purple. One of the most nasty things about having this genetic disease, if you have a severe attack, is that you actually urinate purple. Your liver and your kidneys start shutting down because urine production actually begins in your liver - it gets sent to your kidneys to be made into urine. But as a default pathway for the human body, what happens is you actually start secreting it out of your nipples. So you start sweating and secreting this purple substance from all over your body And, of course. If you look at the symptoms of this disease, you know, you get restlessness, delusions, you don't sleep, you have carbohydrate cravings, of course, you know, and you're urinating. purple stuff out of your nipples. It's not good. And you're drinking blood.
Ashley Thornberg: It sounds like a case where the treatment may be, not worse than the disease, but what can happen to a person drinking the blood of another species or even their own species? Could that, I assume, further complicate porphyria?
Dr. Mazz Marry: Actually, it's been hypothesized over the years by many historians that it actually alleviated some of the effects of it. Nowadays, there is actually a treatment where you can take donated blood, spin it down - just get the red blood cells and inject them into someone who has this genetic disease and it alleviates a lot of the symptoms. It's a treatment because red blood cells only survive when they're mature for about 100 to 120 days, so it has to be constantly done, but it does help people with this disease.
Ashley Thornberg: Another one is zombies and I read about a toxin that just…really creeps me out.
Dr. Mazz Marry: When Christianity came to certain areas of the world, they always tried to adapt old faiths. So when they went to the Caribbean, there [were] all these Creole paganistic rituals and they brought Catholicism and Christianity to it. There was always this myth of having a zombie master. This person would...control zombies and the myth was he'd bring people back from the dead…There was this British scientist in the early 90s who went to the Caribbean and finally convinced someone who said he was a zombie master to give him something called zombie powder, which he used to make people into zombies. So he took it back to his lab and analyzed it and the main component was something called tetrodotoxin, which is from pufferfish. It's one of the reasons why some people who eat sushi made of a pufferfish die if it's not cut up properly because the toxin gets into your blood and kills you.
Ashley Thornberg: So that episode of the Simpsons is true?
Dr. Mazz Marry: It might actually be. But if you think about it logically…if you think about an anesthesiologist, their job is to keep someone unconscious so they don't feel pain. If you knew what you were doing and had an idea to give someone the right amount of this drug all the time to keep them almost dead-like, but get them to do something, that makes perfect sense.
Ashley Thornberg: Why would you give someone zombie powder?
Dr. Mazz Marry: I think it's like an early form of slavery. You get people that don't know they're doing any real work, they will work for nothing, and then you can work the plantations with them. As long as you make them do something, they really have no idea. As long as they're medicated to a point where they'll willingly do something and not realize they're doing it. You create a very, very, very cheap workforce. There is an alternative theory of catatonic schizophrenia which actually does bring on the same symptoms. If you're unfortunate enough to have this mental disease you don't move - you lose interest in everything. But if someone actually holds you and stands you up and makes you walk…that's kind of like being a zombie.
Ashley Thornberg: I read about another illness…I think it was called catalepsy…where it was a condition where someone would appear to be dead. They could not move, they could not respond to stimuli, they could not talk, but were technically alive and the results could last - this could happen for minutes [or] it could happen for days, and so it potentially led to being buried alive and then people digging themselves out of their own grave…Have you heard of that one?
Dr. Mazz Marry: I have. Nowadays they call that various different types of seizures, and it was more rife in northern Europe than anywhere else. And that's where the phrase “Saved by the bell” comes from. [Everyone] was so worried about getting buried alive, mostly because the first serial killer ever who was a werewolf was German…They used to tie a piece of string around someone's big toe and leave them for three days in a casket that was open…If they came to their senses they'd move and the bell would ring and then they'd take him out of the casket and take him to a hospital.
Ashley Thornberg: So coming back to life and walking - I'm getting these for the zombie. The other…characteristic of zombies [is] eating brains. Is there any medical [reason] or was that all imagination afterwards?
Dr. Mazz Marry: As far as I know, I think that's just made up to horrify us around Halloween. I couldn't find any real lore...Back way before Christianity came to most parts of the world, women were the ones who were educated. Witchcraft actually means craft of the wise, so they were the ones who were educated. For example, if someone went to the witch, she was an educated woman. So they went to her and said, “Oh, my leg hurts, I've got a headache.” She'd know to go and pull a piece of willow bark off that had salicylic acid in it and get them to chew on it. That's aspirin. But when Christianity came around a lot of Christians thought well, obviously, women can't have an opinion. They can't be educated. They can't do anything. So they were declared evil. But…it means nothing. It's a way of life. It's also a pagan religion. You have a father god and a mother goddess. You thank the land for what it gives you. But it wasn't Christianity. So it was deemed evil and that's where it started. And the whole thing about the Salem Witch Trials is a completely different story.
A little girl who was 11, name was Betty Paris. She started acting odd. She started dashing about. She started jumping under furniture. She contorted in pain. Because the mark of the devil was a bruise she was declared infested by an evil demon and moved away from her parents. Now, today, these things could be epilepsy, stress, guilt, child abuse, even asthma. An asthma attack would make you... You can dive under a table just so you subconsciously…feel safer. So you can breathe more easily. Then some of her friends started having the same symptoms, and then some of her family members, and then people around the town started having the family symptoms. So they brought in a doctor who saw all these bruises and said, “Oh, they're possessed by evilness.” And at the time, of course, young children were considered most susceptible to be possessed by evil spirits. So they stuck them all in a house, and they brought in a judge, and they had the whole Salem Witch Trial…
Couple of things to remember is It was very cold. It was one of these years where they say it was the year of our summer and rye crops were down. Now when it gets cold, there's this ergot fungal disease that affects wheat and rye. So they had diminishing food stocks, they knew what the fungus was, and they'd been using the plants to make bread and mead…Remember, back in those days you couldn't drink river water or anything like that. There was no purification. You'd more likely die of cholera than thirst, so they had to ferment it into an alcoholic beverage. So they put all these people...in what they call the Salem Witch House and they just said, “We'll keep the healthy food. These people are possessed by evil spirits, so we'll just give them mead and bread made out of the infected rye and wheat.” So they kept feeding them and making them drink all this stuff, and of course they got worse and worse. They went on trial until they were convicted of being witches and they were all put to death. But the thing is, when you chemically analyze the ergot, it's actually a disease called convulsive ergotism and the main cause of it is the fact that ergot fungus is actually where LSD was first isolated. They weren't bewitched by anything. They were just being fed masses of amounts of a hallucinogenic substance.
Ashley Thornberg: One last note about witches. Speaking in tongues, where does that come from?
Dr. Mazz Marry: Oh, that's a great one. That's another thing where women were denied their power. So speaking in tongues actually comes from the fact that back then if a woman spoke her mind and disagreed with somebody, that was speaking in tongues.
Ashley Thornberg: Dr. Marry, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it.
Dr. Mazz Marry: You're welcome. Thank you.
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