Also vampyrism. [f. VAMPIRE sb.] The collective facts or ideas associated with the supposed existence and habits of vampires.
1794–6. E. Darwin, Zoon., II. 63. The supposed existence … of witchcraft, vampyrism, animal magnetism and American tractors.
1819. [Polidori], The Vampyre, Introd. p. xxii. The same measures were adopted with the corses of those persons who had previously died from vampyrism.
1855. Smedley, Occult Sci., 66. Instances of Vampirism, which chiefly occurred in Hungary.
1872. Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly, III. 262. He devoted himself to the minute and laborious investigation of the marvellously authenticated tradition of Vampirism.
fig. 1801. Southey, Lett. (1856), I. 183. The Magazine exists;… the spirit having left it, I suspect vampirism in its present life.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., II. III. ii. Treason, delusion, vampyrism, scoundrelism, from Dan to Beersheba!
1858. O. W. Holmes, Aut. Breakf.-t., ix. (1883), 175. Ah! long illness is the real vampyrism.
