Assuming this line of speculation is well founded, and I do so assume, one of the horror genre's cornerstone archetypes went from being a fear of disease to being something almost entirely demonic to... what it is today. The physical basis is fascinating, and I think you VERY MUCH for brining all this to the fore.lombano wrote: I think these origins may also explain why vampires went from being terrifying to nowadays being everything from sexy to appearing on children's shows; rabies, once common enough in Europe for there to be special hospitals for the rabid, is now pretty rare in most of the world, and moreover immunisation is pretty effective. It is a sufficiently distant fear so that vampires can be portrayed as 'friendly.'
I believe there's plenty here to argue about what it all might mean, and I'll leave that to much keener minds than mine. Apart from succubi and incubi, I still believe that much of the contemporary sexualised vampire sources from what I'm calling the modern archetype: Stoker's.