While Renfield is the only asylum patient we get to hear about, other characters in the novel Dracula are ill from time to time, and are considered as ‘patients’. Their supposed illnesses, whether psychological or physical, tend to be of a more respectable kind than ‘lunacy’, and reflect the interpretation and labelling of symptoms provided in private medical practice at the time for the more well-to-do. The two doctors, Seward and Van Helsing, tend to intervene personally and aim to prevent, as far as possible, other medical oversight – whether from family doctors or coroners.