Lycanthropy
The werewolf confessions, and the clinical lycanthropy of the wards.
In the Texts
The demonologists of Canale’s age, Boguet and Bodin above all, tried and burned men who confessed to running as wolves; the physicians, Weyer and Burton, read the same confessions as the melancholy called lycanthropia by the Greeks, in which the sufferer believes himself a wolf, haunts graveyards, and howls.
What Medicine Makes of It
The delusion of being an animal is rare and well described in the modern literature: Keck and colleagues in 1988 collected twelve cases in one hospital, most with depression, mania, or schizophrenia, in whom the belief of transformation came and went with the illness. The animal is the culture’s: wolves in early modern France, dogs, cats, and birds since. The werewolf trials also had the features of the witch trials, torture and leading questions, and some confessions of a child-killing wolf were confessions of a child-killer.
The Evidence
- Keck et al. (1988) found twelve cases in one Boston hospital over twelve years: depression (two), bipolar disorder (five), schizophrenia (two), and others; the delusion resolved with the illness in most.
- A review of 56 published cases from 1850 to 2012 (Blom, 2014) found wolves, dogs, cats, snakes, and birds; the animal reflected the culture and the patient’s own associations.
- The werewolf trials of 1520–1630 were concentrated in France, the Franche-Comté, and the German lands (Oates, 1989); Jean Grenier, tried in 1603 at fourteen, was judged mad by the Parlement of Bordeaux and confined, not burned.
- Burton (1621) and Weyer (1563) both cite the Greek physicians on lycanthropia as a melancholy; the medical reading predates and outlived the demonological.
- Clinical lycanthropy is now classed as a delusional misidentification of the self, with case reports of the belief arising in the course of schizophrenia and resolving with antipsychotic treatment (Nejad and Toofani, 2005).
Where They Part
Weyer’s reading of 1563, that the wolf-men were sick and should be physicked, is the clinic’s, and the demonologists lost the argument within a century. The clinical cases show the belief is real; the wolf is not.
In the Materia Medica
Sources
- Keck, P. E., et al. (1988). “Lycanthropy: alive and well in the twentieth century.” Psychological Medicine 18.
- Weyer, J. (1563). De praestigiis daemonum, IV.
- Oates, C. (1989). “Metamorphosis and lycanthropy in Franche-Comté,” in Feher, M. (ed.), Fragments for a History of the Human Body, vol. 1.
Historical and interpretive; not medical advice.