11 pm. It is hard to make Renfield sleep, so I gave him a strong dose of drugs tonight. Then I took away his notebook to look at it. A thought has been buzzing about in my brain lately. Now it is complete, and I know I was right.

My patient is of a peculiar kind. I shall have to invent a new word to describe him. I will call him a zoophagous (life-eating) maniac. What he wants to do is to take into himself as many lives as he can. He does this by eating cretaures that have eaten other creatures. 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 he have done after the cat?

It would almost be worth while to complete the experiment. It might be done if there were only a good enough reason. People did not think that experiments on animals were a good idea, and yet look at the results today! The most difficult and vital part of science is the knowledge of the brain. If I understood the secret of one damaged mind, if I held the key to the strange ideas of even one lunatic, I might help to improve my own branch of science.