Template:Are You Sure/May 7

• ... that Gerard van Swieten (7 May 1700 – 18 June 1772) was a Dutch physician who from 1745 was the personal physician of the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and transformed the Austrian health service and medical university education;

and that in 1755, the Empress sent van Swieten to Moravia to investigate the situation relating to vampires; and that van Swieten intended to eradicate the vampire myth as a "barbarism of ignorance"; and that his report, Abhandlung des Daseyns der Gespenster ("Discourse on the Existence of Ghosts") offered an entirely natural explanation for the belief in vampires; and that Empress Maria Theresa consequently issued a decree that banned all traditional justification for executing alleged vampires?