What is lycanthropy?
Lycanthropy is a mythical or mystical disease that causes metamorphoses in the body, during which the patient turns into a wolf; one of the types of therianthropy. A psychosis in which the patient may feel that he is turning or has turned into a beast or exhibits his characteristic habits.
Lycanthropy disease
Clinical lycanthropy is caused by a malfunction of certain areas of the cerebral cortex that are responsible for movement and sensation. With the help of the sensory membrane of the brain, a person forms an idea both about the world around him and about himself. Sheath defects allow the owner of the syndrome to consider himself an animal and visualize his behavioral habits.
Mental illness
It is worth recognizing that lycanthropy in humans is in fact a mental disorder. It has an indirect relationship to psychology: such a disease cannot be a temporary imbalance due to stress or low self-esteem. Werewolves always have in their complex paranoid delusions, acute psychosis, bipolar personality disorder or epilepsy.
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Dominican monks James Springer and Heinrich Kramer categorically stated that the transformation of a man into a wolf is impossible. They believed that with the help of various potions and spells, a sorcerer or sorcerer can make the one who looks at him imagine that he has turned into a wolf or other animal, but it is impossible to physically turn a person into a beast.
Nevertheless, as a disease that makes a person think that he has turned into a beast and should behave accordingly, this phenomenon has been known since time immemorial.
From the history
As early as about 125 BC. e. the Roman poet Marcellus Sidet wrote about an illness in which a person is seized by mania, which is accompanied by a terrible appetite and wolfish ferocity. According to Sidet, a person is more susceptible to it at the beginning of the year, especially in February, when the disease intensifies and can be observed in the most acute forms. Those exposed to its influence then leave for abandoned cemeteries and live there like fierce hungry wolves. They believed that a werewolf is a bad, sinful person who was turned into a beast by the gods as a punishment. But such people physically remain human, only imagining themselves as beasts, and do not become wolves.
• The first case of hypertrichosis in history was recorded at the end of the 16th century. The Gonsalvus family lived in France and Italy, where almost all of its members were carriers of the Werewolf gene.
• The most famous wolf woman, Julia Pastrana. She and her son's mummy were shown at many European exhibitions as the most terrible people of the 19th century. Only on February 12, 2013, Patsrana was buried at home in Mexico.
1) Julia Pastrana - (1834-1860) - Mexico; 2) Portrait of a young Tognina Gonsalvus by Lavinia Fontana - Italy
Medical justification
Cases related to werewolves have long been considered by official science no more than fairy tales. At least until that time, until in 1963, Dr. Lee Illis did not present a work entitled "On Porphyria and the Etymology of Werewolves." In it, the scientist argued that outbreaks of werewolf have a medical justification. He argued that we are talking about porphyrin disease - a serious disease, expressed in increased sensitivity to light, causes discoloration of teeth and skin and can often lead to manic-depressive states and lycanthropy. As a result, a person loses his human appearance and often loses his mind. In his work, Dr. Lee Illis cited about 80 cases of this kind, which he happened to meet in his practice.
That the disease can be transmitted through bites, the doctor considered nonsense. In his book, he says that this disease is not contagious, because it is hereditary - what modern science calls genetic abnormalities that are associated with a person's race. In this connection, he notes that it is no coincidence that in Europe the disease, which made people consider themselves violent beasts, sometimes affected entire villages and small towns. The peasants ran on all fours, howled and even bitten their own cows. Of course, no one examined these unfortunates or tried to cure them. They were chased and hounded by dogs. Some were healed by themselves, but hundreds of them died like beasts. At the same time, for example, in Ceylon they had never heard of werewolves, especially about werewolves.
The discovery made by Lee Illis largely explains the nature of the phenomenon, which in scientific circles has long been considered nonsense and superstition. But it does not answer some questions, the main one of which is as follows: how can a werewolf again acquire a human form a few hours after turning into a beast. Dr. Illis himself believes that such a transformation is theoretically possible, but unlikely.
All the qualities attributed to a werewolf are easily debunked in our time by science, which proves the impossibility of this kind of reincarnation for a living being. Most of those who consider themselves werewolves these days are patients in psychiatric hospitals. Today, people of both sexes, imagining and feeling themselves werewolves, doctors call "lycanthropes", and this word has become a psychiatric diagnosis.
First description of the disease
The author of a seven-volume encyclopedia of medicine, one of the most respected physicians of his era, Pavel Egineta, who lived in Alexandria in the 7th century, was the first to describe lycanthropy in medical terms. He analyzed the disease and named the causes that cause it: mental disorders, pathologies and hallucinogenic drugs. Symptoms of lycanthropy: pallor, weakness, dry eyes and tongue (without tears and saliva), constant thirst, non-healing wounds, obsessive desires and states.
XVI century
By the 16th century, many works were written on this topic. It was believed that werewolves are not people possessed by a demon or evil spirits, but simply "melancholic who have fallen into self-deception." The famous physician of the time, Robert Burton, also considered lycanthropy a form of insanity. His pharmacological studies showed that the composition of the ointments prepared by the sorcerers for "wrapping" included strong hallucinogens. And the stimulus for cannibalism - a significant, if not the determining factor - could be acute malnutrition.
Our days
Today psychiatrists explain lycanthropy as a consequence of organic-cerebral syndrome, associated with mental disorder, manic-depressive psychosis and psychomotor epilepsy, that is, as a consequence of schizophrenia and "concomitant" disorders. In children, lycanthropy can result from congenital autism.
Diagnosis - It is believed that lycanthropy can be diagnosed with any of two symptoms:
• The patient himself says that he sometimes feels or felt that he turned into a beast;
• The patient behaves in a rather animal-like manner, for example howling, barking or crawling on all fours.
For example, a murderer (28 years old) in France, suffering from paranoia, schizophrenia and lycanthropia, described his illness in 1932 as follows: when I am upset, I feel as if I am turning into someone else; my fingers are numb, as if pins and needles are stuck in my palm; I am losing control of myself. I feel like I'm turning into a wolf. I look at myself in the mirror and see the transformation process. My face is no longer mine, it is absolutely transformed. I gaze intently, my pupils dilate, and I feel as if my hair is growing all over my body, and my teeth are getting longer.
Lycanthropes of our days are distinguished by a much greater imagination: they "turn" not only and not so much into wolves as into other creatures, including aliens who communicate with space and visit other worlds. Then they "become" ordinary people again.
Doctors call one of the reasons for this psychiatric phenomenon a defensive reaction. When a person has psychological problems, he leaves reality, lives in a fictional or virtual world. There he is significant, there he is loved, and sometimes they are persecuted - hence all the manias and obsessions. Usually, attacks of lycanthropy in a person are either short-term, but often repeated, or he does not come out of the "attack" at all, considering himself a beast, and no "enlightenment" occurs.
The human psyche is very poorly understood, therefore it is difficult to argue with psychiatrists even today. And few people believe in the possibility of physical transformation of a person into a wolf or into some other animal. But it is unlikely that it will be possible to completely convince everyone that werewolves do not exist, even in the 21st century, even for all doctors together.
Werewolf. Engraving, Germany, 1512
Genetic disease
In addition to "psychic" lycanthropy, when people consider themselves to be a beast, there is also "physical" - when a person has the physical signs of a wolf, usually rudimentary from birth. So, in Mexico, in Gualajara, there is a center for biomedical research, in which Dr. Lewis Figuerra has been studying "genetic lycanthropy" for many years. The doctor examines one of the 32 Mexican families, the Aciva family. They all suffer from a rare genetic disease that is inherited and causes profound changes in human shape. The entire surface of the body of people from the Aciva family (including women) is covered with thick hair, even on the face, palms and heels. Their posture, voice and facial expressions are also quite atypical.
For many decades, Acivs have only entered into intrapartum marriages, because, according to Dr. Figuerra, the cause of their disease is a gene that is inherited. This mutation arose in members of this family back in the Middle Ages, but later, until the end of the 20th century, did not manifest itself in any way.
Now all Acivs live in the north of Mexico, in the mountain town of Zacatecas, which is also known from the sixth book of Carlos Castaneda "Gift of the Eagle", in which he talks about the ability of shamans, called by the people "naguales", to transform into animals to achieve the inner nagual - enlightenment … Local residents treat them contemptuously, if not even hostile, not wanting to maintain any ties with the "damned family".
None of Aciva suffers from mental disabilities, therefore it is unlikely that this disease can be ranked as lycanthropy like those mentioned earlier, but Dr. Figuerra, who claims that this disease is incurable, calls it the "lycanthropy gene" which he hopes early or late to find and neutralize.
Germany has the Rhine Institute for the Study of Alternative Medicine. Professor of this institute Helmut Schulz has been researching werewolves for many years and takes this phenomenon quite seriously. Schultz believes that werewolf is an inherited genetic disorder. Schultz wrote that most often werewolves are born in a sparsely populated area, where people for many years, generation after generation, live in a rather closed small circle, and as a result, there are related marriages. In one of his monographs, Schultz wrote the following.
Maybe this disease is just the result of incest. Modern medicine today is not able to understand the mechanism of the disease. But the ability of werewolves to change their biological form for some time without losing the protein base is absolutely obvious. To explain this rich phenomenon as a purely mental anomaly, when the patient only imagines himself as a werewolf, would be a very stupid mistake.
Transformation state
Some of the researchers on werewolf transformation say that the shapes of the werewolf actually depend on its perception. In addition, it is argued that the entity itself retains memory or information about the original body, which allows the werewolf to return to its original form. Perception leads to a state of transition of the essence, that is, to a state of transformation. Observing “only” clinical lycanthropes, one can notice that transformation - even within the framework of mental illness - does not begin immediately, but after a certain moment of change in the personality traits of the lycanthrope as an individual.
It is believed that the clinical lycanthrope is only a stage in the development of a creature on the path of its transformation into a real werewolf. It is understood that the perception of this creature changes, it adapts to the presence in the new essence, and then the very form of the creature changes, adapting to the new essence. Something similar is observed in those who have been engaged in scuba diving since childhood. Observing life under water, they feel their unity with this world. The underwater world becomes their world, their life. As a result, such people begin to feel better not in the human world, but in the bright, colorful world of fish and corals.
And in both cases, it can be noted that for the manifestation of this effect, certain serious factors are needed. Therefore, it is not possible to consider the appearance of werewolves as a typical case. This is most likely an exception. Most often, a lycanthrope does not reach the level of a werewolf in its development. This is due to the impact of the limiting environment and upbringing.
Most of the researchers of this issue argue that the howling of wolves, the phases of the moon, smells or the environment affect the consciousness of the lycanthrope, prompting him to act. This influence can be characterized as a manifold increased desire to do something. In such a state, a person splits his consciousness, suppressing in himself that being, which is usually considered a person.
Such a state extremely sharpens the senses, changes perception. This in modern psychiatry explains most of the cases of clinical lycanthropy.
A. Berg