When Dracula was written, science and medicine was the key to understanding the world. For the characters in Dracula, this heavy importance of science left them all with a huge dilemma, as they struggled to mentally overcome the doubt they felt about the supernatural and more specifically rhe possibility of the existence of vampires. It takes the characters almost half of the novel to finally overcome their doubt and to organize their thoughts and accept that there might be something that defies science. Dr. Van Helsing explains to Dr. Steward this strange battle when he says, “Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new, and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young, like the fine ladies at the opera” (204). This is a strange conversation as it is, let alone it being between the professor and former student, both of whom are doctors of science. Later on Dr. Van Helsing also expresses his thoughts to the group when he says, “Does not the belief in vampires rest for others, though not, alas! for us, on them! A year ago which of us would have received such a possibility, in the midst of our scientific, sceptical, matter-of-fact nineteenth century?” (254). The ironic nature of both of these conversations is that the one to best overcome the doubt of the supernatural and put aside all scientific reasoning is the older doctor. However by overcoming the doubt of the supernatural, the characters can begin to work together to figure out how to kill Dracula once and for all.