my @mailfiles = </path/to/files/*>;

foreach my $file (@mailfiles){
	my @text_blocks;

	open TEXT, '<', $file or die "could not open $file";
	my $text;
	while (<TEXT>){
        	$text .= $_;
       		} 

        @text_blocks = split(/\n{2,}/, $text);
        close TEXT;
       
        #also tried the method below with similar results
        #{
        #    local $/ = '';
        #    @text_blocks = <TEXT>;
        #}
        #close TEXT;

        print scalar(@text_blocks);

        }