Van Helsing is a Dutch polymath doctor with a wide range of interests and accomplishments, partly attested by the string of letters that follows his name: " MD , D. He is a doctor , professor , lawyer , philosopher , scientist , and metaphysician. The character is best known through many adaptations of the story as a vampire slayer , monster hunter and the arch-nemesis of Count Dracula , and the prototypical and the archetypal parapsychologist in subsequent works of paranormal fiction.
Some later works tell new stories about Van Helsing, while others, such as Dracula and I Woke Up a Vampire have characters that are his descendants. In the novel, Professor Van Helsing is called in by his former student, John Seward , to assist with the mysterious illness of Lucy Westenra. Van Helsing's friendship with Seward is based in part upon an unknown prior event in which Van Helsing suffered a grievous wound, and Seward saved his life by sucking out the gangrene.
It is Van Helsing who first realizes that Lucy is the victim of a vampire , and he guides Seward and his friends in their efforts to save Lucy. Van Helsing had a son who died. He says that his son, had he lived, would have had a similar appearance to Lucy's suitor Arthur Holmwood "My heart bleed for that poor boy, that dear boy, so of the age of mine own boy had I been so blessed that he live, and with his hair and eyes the same". Consequently, Van Helsing developed a particular fondness for Holmwood.
Van Helsing's wife went insane from grief after their son's death, but as a Catholic, he refuses to divorce her "with my poor wife dead to me, but alive by Church's law, though no wits, all gone, even I, who am faithful husband to this now-no-wife".
Van Helsing is one of the few characters in the novel who is fully physically described in one place. In chapter 14, Mina Harker describes him as:. The poise of the head strikes me at once as indicative of thought and power. The head is noble, well-sized, broad, and large behind the ears. The face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large resolute, mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with quick, sensitive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big bushy brows come down and the mouth tightens.
