It was not till the close of the Middle Ages that lycanthropy was recognized as a disease; but it is one which has so much that it is ghastly and revolting in its form, and it is so remote from all our ordinary experience, that it is not surprising that the casual observer should leave the consideration of it, as a subject isolated and perplexing, and be disposed to regard as a myth that which the feared investigation might prove a reality.
Many mens and womens were accused of lycanthropy for precise matters that don't have anything to do in turning into a wolf. But they arrested people under the charge of lycanthropy for cannibalism and such acts... What motives some humans to this blood thirstiness? Nothing to do with wolves, this is the result of the bloodlust common to all of us.. at different degrees...
Startling though the assertion may be, it is a matter of fact, that man, naturally, in common with other carnivora, is actuated by an impulse to kill, and by a love of destroying life.
It is positively true that there are many to whom the sight of suffering
causes genuine pleasure, and in whom the passion to kill or torture is
as strong as any other passion. Witness the number of boys who assemble
around a sheep or pig when it is about to be killed, and who watch the
struggle of the dying brute with hearts beating fast
with pleasure, and eyes sparkling with delight. Often have I seen an
eager crowd of children assembled around the slaughterhouses of French
towns, absorbed in the expiring agonies of the sheep and cattle, and hushed
into silence as they watched the flow of blood.
The propensity, however, exists in different degrees. In some it is manifest simply as indifference to suffering, in others it appears as simple pleasure in seeing killed, and in others again it is dominant as an irresistible desire to torture and destroy.
This propensity is widely diffused; it exits in children and adults, in the gross-minded and the refined, the the well-educated and the ignorant, in those who have never had the opportunity of gratifying it, and those who gratify it habitually, in spite of morality, religion, laws, so that it can only depend on constitutional causes.
The sportsman
and the fisherman follow a natural instinct to destroy, when they make
war on bird, beast, and fish: the pretence that the spoil is sought for
the table cannot be made with justice, as the sportsman cares little for
the game he has obtained, when once it is consigned to his porch. The motive
for his eager pursuit of bird or beast must
be sought elsewhere; it will be found in the natural craving to extinguish
life, which exists in his soul. Why does a child impulsively strike at
a butterfly as it flits past him? He cares nothing for the insect when
once it is beaten down at his feet, unless it be quivering in its agony,
when he will watch it with interest. The child strikes at the fluttering
creature because it has life in it, and he has an instinct within him impelling
him to destroy life wherever he finds it.
Parents and nurses know well that children by nature are cruel, and that humanity has to be acquired by education. A child will gloat over the suffereings of a wounded animal till his mother bids him "put it out of his misery." An unsophisticated child would not dream of terminating the poor creature's agonies abruptly, any more than he would swallow whole a bon-bon till he had well sucked it. Inherent cruelty may be obscured by after impressions, or may be kept under normal restraint; the person who is constitutionally a Nero, may scarcely know his own nature, till by some accident the master passion becomes dominant, and sweeps all before it. A relaxation of the moral check, a shock to the controlling intellect, an abnormal condition of body, are sufficient to allow the passion to assert itself.
The degrees of this passion is different for all of us.... Here are different degrees that I noted...
In some it is exhibited in simple want of feeling for other people's
sufferings. This temperament may lead to crime, for the individual who
is regardless of pain in another, will be ready to destroy that other,
if it suit his own purposes. Such an one was the pauper Dumollard, who
was the murderer of at least six poor girls, and who attempted to kill
several others. He seems not to have felt much gratification in murdering
them, but to have been so utterly indifferent to their sufferings, that
he killed them solely for the sake of their clothes, which were of the
poorest description. He was sentenced to the guillotine, and executed in
1862.
In others, the passion for blood is developed alongside with indifference to suffering.
Thus Andreas Bichel enticed young women into his house, under the pretence
that he was possessed of a magic mirror, in which he would show them their
future husbands; when he had them in his power he bound their hands behind
their backs, and stunned them with a blow. He then stabbed them and despoiled
them of their clothes, for the sake of which he committed the murders;
but as he killed the young women the passion of cruelty took
possession of him, and he hacked the poor girls to pieces whilst they
were still alive, in his anxiety to examine their insides. Catherine Seidel
he opened with a hammer and a wedge, from her breast downwards, whilst
still breathing. "I may say," he remarked at his trial, "that during the
operation I was so eager, that I trembled all over, and I longed to rive
off a piece and eat it."
Andreas Bichel was executed in 1809.
Again, a third class of persons are cruel and bloodthirsty, because in them bloodthirstiness is a raging insatiable passion. In a civilized country those possessed by this passion are forced to control it through fear of consequences, or to gratify it upon the brute creation. But in earlier days, when feudal lords were supreme in their domains, there have been firghtful instances of their excesses, and the extent to which some of the Roman emperors indulged their passion for blood is matter of history.
Gall gives several authentic instances of bloodthirstiness. A Dutch priest had such a desire to kill and to see killed, that he became chaplain to a regiment that he might have the satisfaction of seeing deaths occuring wholesale in engagements. The same man kept a large collection of various kinds of domestic animals, that he might be able to torture their young. He killed the animals for his kitchen, and was acquainted with all the hangmen in the country, who sent him notice of executions, and he would walk for days that he might have the gratification of seeing a man executed.
In the field of battle passion is variously developed; some feel positive delight in slaying, others are indifferent. An old soldier, who had been in Waterloo, informed me that to his mind there was no pleasure equal to running a man through the body, and that he could lie awake at night musing on the pleasurable sensations afforded him by that act.
Highwaymen are frequently not content with robbery, but manifest a bloody inclination to torment and kill. John Rosbeck, for instance, is well known to have invented and exercised the most atrocious cruelties, merely that he might witness the sufferings of his victims, who were especially women and children. Neither fear nor torture could break him of the dreadful passion till he was executed.
Gall tells of a violin-player, who, being arrested, confessed to thirty-four murders, all of which he had committed, not from enmity or intent to rob, but solely because it afforded him an intense pleasure to kill.
Spurzheim tells of a priest at Strasbourg, who, though rich, and uninfluenced by envy or revenge, from exactly the same motive, killed three persons.
Gall relates the case of a brother of the Duke of Bourbon, Conde, Count of Charlois, who, from infancy, had an inveterate pleasure in torturing animals: growing older, he lived to shed the blood of human beings, and to exercise various kinds of cruelty. He also murdered many from no other motive, and shot at slaters for the pleasure of seeing them fall from the roofs of houses.
Louis XI of France caused the death of 4,000 people during the reign; he used to watch their executions from a neighboring lattice. He had gibbets placed outside his own palace, and himself conducted the executions.
It must not be supposed that cruelty exists merely in the coarse and rude; it is quite frequently observed in the refined and educated. Among the former it is chiefly in insensibility to the sufferings of others; in the latter it appears as a passion, the indulgence of which causes intense pleasure.
Those bloody tyrants, Nero and Caligula, Alexander Borgia, and Robespierre, whose highest enjoyment consisted in witnessing the agonies of their fellow-men, were full of delicate sensibilities and great refinement of taste and manner.
I have seen an accomplished young woman of considerable refinement and of a highly strung nervous temperament, string flies with her needle on a piece of thread, and watch complacently their flutterings. Cruelty may remain latent till, by some accident it is aroused, and then it will break forth in a devouring flame. It is the same with the passion for blood as with the passions of love and hate; we have no conception of the violence with which they can rage till circumstances occur which call them into action. Love or hate will be dominant in a breast which has been in serenity, till suddenly the spark falls, passion blazes forth, and the serenity of the quiet breast is shattered for ever. A word, a glance, a touch, are sufficient to fire the magazine of passion in the heart, and to desolate for ever an existence. It is the same with bloodthirstiness. It may lurk in the deepsof some heart very dear to us. It may smoulder in the bosom which is most cherished by us, and we may be perfectly unconscious of its existence there. Perhaps circumstances will not cause its development; perhaps moral principle may have bound it down with fetters it can never break.
Michael Wagener relates a horrible story which occured in Hungry, suppressing the name of the person, as it was that a still powerful family in the county. It illustrates what I have been saying, and shows how trifling a matter may develope the passion in its most hideous proportions.
"Elizabeth---was wont to dress well in order to please her husband, and she spent half the day over her toilet. On one occasion, a lady's-maid saw something wrong in her head-dress, and as a recompence for observing it, received such a severe box on the ears that the blood gushed from her nose, and spirited on to her mistress's face. When the blood drops were washed off her face, her skin appeared much more beautiful---whiter and more transparent on the spots where the blood had been.
Elizabeth formed the resolution to bathe her face and her whole body
in human blood so as to enhance her beauty. Two old women and a certain
Fitzko assisted her in her undertaking. This monster used to kill the luckless
victim, and the old women caught the blood, in which Elizabeth was wont
to bathe at the hour of four in the morning. After
the bath she appeared more beautiful than before.
"She continued this habit after the death of her husband (1604) in the hopes of gaining new suitors. The unhappy girls who were allured to the castle, under the plea that they were to be taken into service there, were locked up in a celler. Here they were beaten till their were swollen. Elizabeth not unfrequently tortured the victims herself; often she changed their clothes which dripped with blood, and then renewed her cruelties. The swollen bodies were then cut up with razors.
"Occassionally she had the girls burned, and then cut up, but the great majority were beaten to death.
"At last her cruelty became so great, that she would stick needles into those who sat with her in a carriage, especially if they were of her own sex. One of her servant-girls she stripped naked, smeared her with honey, and so drove her out of the house.
"When she was ill, and could not indulge her cruelty, she bit a person who came near her sick bed as though she were a wild beast.
"She caused, in all, the death of 650 girls, wome in Tscheita, on the neutral ground, where she had a cellar constructed for the purpose; others in different localities; for murder and bloodshed became with her a necessity. "When at last the parents of the lost children could not longer be cajoled, the castle was seized, and the traces of the murders were discovered. Her accomplices were executed, and she was imprisoned for life."
An equally remarkable example will be found in the account of the Mareschal de Retz given at some length in the sequel. He was an accomplised man, a scholar, an able general, and a courtier; but suddenly the impulse to murder and destroy came upon him whilst sitting in the library reading Suetonius; he yielded to the impulse, and became one of the greatest monsters of cruelty the world has produced.
The case of Sviatek, the Gallician cannibal, is also to the purpose. This man was a harmless pauper, till one day accident bought him to the scene of a conflagration. Hunger impelled him to taste of the roast fragments of a human being who had perished in the fire, and from that moment he ravened for man's flesh.
M. Bertrand was a French gentleman of taste and education. He one day
lounged over the churchyard wall in a quiet country village and watched
a funeral. Instantly an overwhelming desire to dig up and rend the corpse
which he had seen committed to the ground came upon him, and for years
he lived as a human hyaena, preying upon the
dead.
An abnormal condition of body sometimes produces this desire for blood. It is manifest in certain cases of pregnancy, when the constitution loses its balance, and the appetite becomes diseased. Schenk gives instances.
A pregnant woman saw a baker carrying loaves on his bare shoulder. She
was at once filled with such a craving for his flesh that she refused to
taste any food till her husband persuaded the baker, by the offer of a
large sum, to allow his wife to bite him. The man yielded, and the woman
fleshed her teeth in his shoulder twice; but he held out
no longer. The wife bore twins on three occasions, twice living, the
third time dead.
A woman in an interesting condition, near Andernach on the Rhine, murdered her husband, to whom she was warmly attached, ate half his body, and salted the rest. When the passion left her she became conscious of the horrible nature of the act, and she gave herself up to justice.
In 1553, a wife cut her husband's throat, and gnawed the nose and the
left arm, whilst the body was yet warm. She then gutted the corpse, and
salted it for future consumption. Shortly after, she gave birth to three
children, and she only became conscious of what she had done when her neighbors
asker after the father, that they might announce
to him the arrival of the little ones.
In the summer of 1845, the Greek papers contained an account of a pregnant woman murdering her husband for the purpose of roasting and eating his liver.
That the passion to destroy is prevalent in certain maniacs is well known; this is sometimes accompanied by cannibalism.
Gruner gives an account of a shepherd who was evidently deranged, who killed and ate two men. Mare relates that a woman of Unterelsas, during the absence of her husband, a poor labourer, murdered her son, a lad fifteen months old. She chopped off his legs and stewed them with cabbage. She ate a portion, and offered the rest to her husband. It is true that the family were very poor, but there was food in the house at the time. In prison the woman gave evident signs of derangement.
The cases in which bloodthirstiness and cannibalism are united with
insanity are those which properly fall under the
head of Lycanthropy. The instances recorded in the preceding chapter
point unmistakably to hallucination
accompanying the lust for blood. Jean Grenier, Roulet, and others,
were firmly convinced that they had undergone
transformation. A disordered condition of mind or body may produce
hallucination in a form depending on the
character and instincts of the individual. Thus, an ambitious man labouring
under monomania will imagine himself
to be a king; a covetous man will be plunged in despair, believing
himself to be penniless, or exult at the vastness
of the treasure which he imagines that he has discovered.
The old man suffering from rheumatism or gout conceives himself to be
formed of china or glass, and the foxhunter
tallyhoos! at each new moon, as though he were following a pack. In
like manner, the naturally cruel man, if the
least afftected in his brain, will suppose himself to be transformed
into the most cruel and bloodthirsty animal with
which he is acquainted.
The hallucinations under which lycanthropists suffered may have arisen
from various causes. The older writers, as
Forestus and Burton, regard the were-wolf mania as a species of melancholy
madness, and some do not deem it
necessary for the patient to believe in his transformation for them
to regard him as a lycanthropist.
In the present state of medical knowledge, we know that very different conditions may give rise to hallucinations.
In fever cases the sensibility is so disturbed that the patient is often
deceived as to the space occupied by his limbs,
and he supposes them to be preternaturally distended or contracted.
In the case of typhus, it is not uncommon for
the sick person, with deranged nervous system, to believe himself to
be double in the bed, or to be severed in half,
or to have lost his limbs. He may regard his members as composed of
foreign and often fragile materials, as glass,
or he may so lose his personality as to suppose himself to have become
a woman.
A monomaniac who believes himself to be some one else, seeks to enter
into the feelings, thoughts, and habits of
the assumed personality, and from the facility with which this is effected,
he draws an argument, comclusive to
himself, of the reality of the change. He thenceforth speaks of himself
under the assumed character, and
experiences all its needs, wishes, passions, and the like. The closer
the identification becomes, the more confirmed
is the monomaniac in his madness, the character of which varies with
the temperament of the individual. If the
person's mind be weak, or rude and uncultivated, the tenacity with
which he clings to his metamorphosis is feebler,
and it becomes more difficult to draw the line between his lucid and
insane utterances. Thus Jean Grenier, who
laboured under this form of mania, said in his trial much that was
true, but it was mixed with the ramblings of
insanity.
Hallucination may also be produced by artificial means, and there are
evidences afforded by the confessions of
those tried for lycanthropy, that these artificial means were employed
by them. I refer to the salve so frequently
mentioned in witch and were-wolf trials. The following passage is from
the charming Golden Ass of Apuleius; it
proves that salves were extensively used by witches for the purpose
of transformation, even in his day:--
"Fotis showed me a crack in the door, and bade me look through it, upon
which I looked and saw Pamphile first
divest herself of all her garments, and then, having unlocked a chest,
take from it several little boxes, and open one
of the latter, which contained a certain ointment. Rubbing this ointment
a good while previously between the palms
of her hands, she annointed her whole body, from the very nails of
her toes to the hair on the crown of her head,
and when she was annointed all over, she whispered many magic words
to a lamp, as if she were talking to it. Then
she began to move her arms, first with tremulous jerks, and afterwards
by a gentle undulating motion, till a
glittering, downy surface by degrees overspread her body, feathers
and strong quills burst forth suddenly, her nose
became a hard crooked beak, her toes changed to curved talons, and
Pamphile was no longer Pamphile, but it was
an owl I saw before me. And now, uttering a harsh, querulous scream,
leaping from the ground by little and little, in
order to try her powers, and presently poising herself aloft on her
pinions, she stretched forth her wings on either
side to their full extent, and flew straight away.
"Having now been actually a witness of the performance of the magical
art, and of the metamorphosis of Pamphile,
I remained for some time in a stupefied state of astonishment... At
last, after I had rubbed my eyes some time, had
recovered a little from the amazement and abstraction of mind, and
begun to feel a consciousness of the reality of
things about me, I took hold of the hand of Fotis and said, --'Sweet
damsel, bring me, I beseech thee, a portion of
the ointment with which thy mistress hath just now anointed, and when
thou hast made me a bird, I will be thy slave,
and even wait upon thee like a winged Cupid.' Accordingly she crept
gently into the apartment, quickly returned
with the box of ointment, hastily placed it in my hands, and then immediately
departed.
"Elated to an extraordinary degree at the sight of the precious treasure,
I kissed the box several times
successively; and uttering repeated aspirations in hopes of a prosperous
flight, I stripped off my clothes as quick as
possible, dipped my fingers greedily into the box, and having thence
extracted a good large lump of ointment,
rubbed it all over my body and limbs. When I was thoroughly anointed,
I swung my arms up and down, in imitation
of the movement of a bird's pinions, and continued to do so little
while, when instead of any perceptible token of
feathers or wings making their appearance, my own thin skin, alas!
grew into a hard leather hide, covered with
bristly hair, my fingers and toes disappeared, the palms of my hands
and the soles of my feet became four solid
hoofs, and from the end of my spine a long tail projected. My face
was enormous, my mouth wide, my nostrils
gaping, my lips pendulous, and I had a pair of immoderately long, rough,
hairy ears. In short, when I came to
contemplate my transformation to its full extent, I found that, instead
of a bird, I had become-- and ASS."
Of what these magical salves were composed we know. They were composed
of narcotics, to wit, Solanum
somniferum , aconite, hyoscyamus, belladonna, opium, acorus vulgaris,
sium. These were boiled down with oil, or
the fat of little children who were murdered for that purpose. The
blood of a bat was added, but its effects could
have been nil. To these may have been added other foreign narcotics,
the names of which have not transpired.
Whatever may have
been the cause of the hallucination, it is not surprising that the lycanthropist
should have imagined himself transformed into a beast. The cases I have
instanced are those of shepherds, who were by nature of their employment,
brought into collision with wolves; and it is not surprising that these
persons, in a condition
liable to hallucinations, should imagine themselves to be transformed
into wild beasts, and that their minds
reverting to the injuries sustained from these animals, they should,
in their state of temporary insanity, accuse
themselves of the acts of rapacity committed by the beasts into which
they believed themselves to be transformed.
It is a well-known fact that men, whose minds are unhinged, will deliver
themselves up to justice, accusing
themselves of having committed crimes which have actually taken place,
and it is only on investigation that their
self-accusation proves to be false; the greatest minutesness, and be
thoroughly convinced of their own criminality. I
need give but a single instance.
In the war of the French Revolution, the Hermione frigate was commanded
by Capt. Pigot, a harsh man and severe
commander. His crew mutinied, and carried the ship into an enemy's
port, having murdered the captain and several
of the officers, under circumstances of extreme barbarity. One midshipman
escaped, by whom many of the
criminals, who were afterwards taken and delivered over to justice,
one by one, were identified. Mr. Finlayson, the
Government actuary, who at that time held an official situation in
the Admiralty, state:-- "In my own experience I
have known, on separate occasions, more than six sailors who voluntarily
confessed to having struck the first blow
at Capt. Pigot. These men detailed all the horrid circumstances of
the mutiny with extreme minuteness and perfect
accuracy; nevertheless, not one of them had ever been in the ship,
nor had so much as seen Capt. Pigot in their
lives. They had obtained by tradition, from their messmates, the particulars
of the story. When long on a foreign
station, hungering and thirsting for home, their minds became enfeebled;
at length they actually believed
themselves guilty of the crime over which they had so long brooded
and submitted with a gloomy pleasure to being
sent to England in irons, for judgement.
At the admiralty we were always able to detect and establish their innocence,
indefiance of their own solemn
asservations." --(London Judicial Gazette, January, 1808)
Medeival Wolf by the Dark Wolf
Science and Lycanthropy by the Dark Wolf
Stories of fear by the Dark Wolf
Modern Werewolves by the Dark Wolf
West Wing Calliope's Private Chambers
East Wing Torture Chamber, Prison
