Blood, Legends, and the Quest for Eternal Youth

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” — Carl Sagan

Ideas about immortality have seemingly circulated since humans first became conscious of their mortality. The awareness of one’s eventual demise has driven many individuals throughout history to seek various ways to attain immortality, avoiding the inevitability of death as promised by religious doctrines. One unique endeavor to achieve immortality is found in the life story of a noblewoman named Elizabeth Báthory.

Elizabeth Báthory was a Hungarian royal aristocrat born in 1560. Like other nobility, she was born into immense wealth and received an education far superior to the common folk. The Báthory family ruled over Transylvania, a region within the Hungarian kingdom in the 16th century.

At the age of 11 or 12, Elizabeth Báthory was engaged to Ferenc Násdady, a man from another aristocratic family in Hungary. They married when she was just 14 years old in 1575. Due to their respective social standings, she retained the Báthory name. They lived in Násdady Castle, situated in the Sárvár and Csetje regions, now part of Slovakia. Ferenc was a knight who frequently went to war and spent little time at the castle, leaving Báthory responsible for its daily affairs. She had four children with him, and he passed away in 1603 when she was 43 years old.

Following her husband’s death, Báthory began exhibiting bizarre and sadistic behavior. Her story has become legendary over the centuries, as she is suspected of killing numerous women. The exact number of her victims remains uncertain, ranging from dozens to hundreds. The myth suggests that she not only killed her victims but also bathed in their blood to maintain her youth. Her tale might have inspired the character of Dracula in Bram Stoker’s novel, depicting a bloodthirsty creature that never ages. While many associate Dracula’s inspiration with Vlad “the Impaler,” the similarities between Báthory’s story and Dracula’s character are striking.

The legend begins when one of her servants accidentally pulled Báthory’s hair while combing it. In pain, she struck the servant’s ear so forcefully that blood dripped onto her hand. Initially, the sight of the servant’s blood made her angrier, but as she wiped the blood from her hand with a towel, she noticed that the wrinkled skin beneath had become smooth again, as if it had absorbed the youth from the servant’s blood. This incident marked the beginning of her fascination with bathing in the blood of young girls. The young girls were bound to a pole, tortured, and bled, with Báthory believing that their blood could rejuvenate her body. At the very least, she honored her victims by paying for their funerals.

Initially, the victims were commoners from the castle’s vicinity. However, as their numbers dwindled, Báthory turned to young noble girls. It was these nobles who eventually reported their suspicions of Báthory and her three servants to the Hungarian royal army. An investigation began in 1610, and by December of the same year, Báthory and her four servants were declared guilty. Three of the servants were tortured and burned at the stake, while one was imprisoned for life. Báthory herself was confined within her castle, a punishment known as “walled-in” where she was sealed inside a room with no doors or windows, only a small slot for food and drink. She died in 1614 at the age of 54.

However, It’s important to remember that you should take the entire story surrounding Báthory with a grain of salt. Based on historical records, Báthory’s murders are a fact, though the idea of her using her victims’ blood for baths remains a subject of debate. When the eyewitness accounts from her 1611 trial were made public two centuries later, none mentioned her bathing in blood. It is true that witnesses saw Báthory smeared with blood, but she is better described as a cannibal rather than a bloodsucker, as she was caught biting into her victims’ flesh, including their breasts. Perhaps the legend of bathing in blood for eternal youth is more acceptable to many than the reality that a beautiful and intelligent princess was actually someone suffering from a mental disorder.

So, what does this have to do with aging? Is the legend of bathing in young maiden’s blood connected to the concept of aging? Not at all. It’s simply a myth.

However, there appears to be something within the blood of young organisms that has a rejuvenating effect.

In 1864, a physiologist named Paul Bert conducted the first parabiosis experiment. He surgically joined two albino mice by grafting a portion of one mouse’s skin onto the side of the other. The healing process caused the mice’s blood circulation to merge. Bert demonstrated that the two mice’s blood circulations had indeed merged by injecting a substance into one mouse and detecting it in the other’s bloodstream. Since then, parabiosis procedures have become routine in experiments using mice. For example, they’ve been used to investigate whether tooth decay is more influenced by blood sugar levels or dietary sugar. Experiments using parabiotic mice confirmed that high blood sugar levels in one mouse did not lead to cavities in the other mouse.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, parabiotic research became increasingly popular in detecting various hormonal substances that influence growth, the role of immune cells, puberty hormones, and more. Not much thought was given to what would happen if the parabiotic partners were of different ages or how it might affect an older mouse when they shared the bloodstream of a younger mouse. Such research was conducted in 1972 by a group of researchers from the University of California. They performed heterochronic parabiosis, where they surgically connected two mice of different ages. Within just five weeks, the older mice that received blood from the younger mice experienced improvements in organ function. Their muscles rejuvenated and functioned like those of young mice, liver function improved, and their brains also showed signs of rejuvenation. Something within the blood of young organisms seemed to not only extend the lifespan of older organisms but also rejuvenate their organs. Unlocking the secrets of cellular rejuvenation may hold the key to a future where age becomes but a number

Since these findings were published, Tom Rando’s laboratory at Stanford University, where Conboy conducted her parabiosis research, received numerous phone calls. People asked,

“Have you just discovered the secret to staying young?”

What’s really inside the blood of young organisms that has a rejuvenating effect will be the topic of another story.