Not a Legend

In a previous article, Legends 3 (sort of), I mentioned Elizabeth Bathory.

<a href="http://www.roguesgalleryonline.com/you-just-cant-get-the-staff/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Source</a>

This was a real person, born in 1560.

When she was fourteen she became pregnant for a peasant. Her parents locked her away until the baby was born, then gave it away. Elizabeth never saw her child.

She was married the following year, to Count Ferenc. When her husband died, she was in her forties, which was old for a woman. To regain her youth, to recapture her life,  was the centre of her being.

Elizabeth believed that blood determined age and getting young blood would make her younger. As a rich woman, she could hire many young girls to work at her palace. Girls who  would not be missed.

Elizabeth Bathory would tie up the girls and drain their blood. She would drink it and bathe in it.In

<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/antiaging-protein-real-deal-harvard-team-claims" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Source</a>

1609, when she was nearly fifty she appeared twenty years younger.

There were many legends about girls disappearing into the Castle, and eventually there was an investigation. It seemed that Elizabeth Bathory had killed six hundred girls.

Scientifically, Elizabeth Bathory was right. It has been proven that  giving old mice an infusion of the blood of young mice does make them younger. There is a protein; called GDF-11, which is present in young mice, which actually does rejuvenate aged ones.

GDF-11

<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/antiaging-protein-real-deal-harvard-team-claims" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Source</a>

If this can work for  humans it would  ‘cure’ Alzheimer’s disease as well as other degenerative brain conditions caused by aging.  It would reverse aging.