Content warning. This episode contains medical ableism, the use of narcotics in a medical context, and references to eugenics and animal cruelty. Dr Seward's Diary. 20 July. visited Renfield very early, before the attendant went his rounds. Found him up and humming a tune. He was spreading out his sugar, which he had saved in the window, and was manifestly beginning his fly-catching again.
and beginning it cheerfully and with a good grace, I looked around for his birds, and not seeing them, asked him where they were. He replied, without turning round, that they had all flown away. There were a few feathers about the room, and on his pillow a drop of blood. I said nothing, but went and told the keeper to report to me if there were anything odd about him during the day.
11am. The attendant has just been to me to say that Renfield has been very sick and has disgorged a whole lot of feathers. My belief is, Doctor... He said. That he has eaten his birds. And that he just took them and ate them raw. 11pm. I gave Renfield a strong opiate tonight, enough to make even him sleep, and took away his pocketbook to look at it. The thought that has been buzzing around my brain lately is complete, and the theory is proved.
My homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind. I shall have to invent a new classification for him, and call him a zoophagous, life-eating maniac. What he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way. He gave many flies to one spider, and many spiders to one bird. and then wanted a cat to eat the many birds. What would have been his later steps? It would almost be worthwhile to complete the experiment.
It might be done if there were only a sufficient cause. Men sneered at vivisection and yet look at its results today. Why not advance science in its most difficult and vital aspect, the knowledge of the brain? Had I even the secret of one such mind, did I hold the key to the fancy of even one lunatic? I might advance my own branch of science to a pitch compared with which burden Sanderson's physiology or Feria's brain knowledge would be as nothing. If only there were a sufficient cause.
I must not think too much of this, or I may be tempted. A good cause might turn the scale with me, for may not I too be of an exceptional brain, congenitally? How well the man reasoned. Lunatics always do within their own scope. I wonder at how many lives he values a man. Or if at only one. He has closed the account most accurately. and today begun a new record. How many of us begin a new record with each day of our lives? To me, it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended with my new hope.
and that truly I began a new record. So it will be until the great recorder sums me up and closes my leisure account with a balance to profit or loss. Oh Lucy. Lucy, I cannot be angry with you, nor can I be angry with my friend, whose happiness is yours. But I must only wait on hopeless and work. Work. If I only could have a stronger cause as my poor mad friend there, a good, unselfish cause to make me work, that would indeed.
This episode featured Jonathan Sims as Jack Seward and Nathan Blades as The Attendant. Dialogue editing by Stephen Intrasano. Sound design by Tao Muneer. Produced by Ella Watts and Pacific S. Obadiah. With executive producers Stephen Indrasano, Tal Manir, and Hannah Wright. A Bloody FM production.