NATURAL CAUSES OF LYCANTHROPY.
Innate Cruelty—Its Three Forms—Dumollard—Andreas Bichel—A Dutch
Priest—Other instances of Inherent Cruelty—Cruelty united to
Refinement—A Hungarian Bather in Blood—Suddenness with which the
Passion is developed—Cannibalism; in pregnant Women; in
Maniacs—Hallucination; how Produced—Salves—The Story of
Lucius—Self-deception.
What I have related from the chronicles of antiquity, or from the
traditional lore of the people, is veiled under the form of myth or
legend; and it is only from Scandinavian descriptions of those
afflicted with the wolf-madness, and from the trials of those charged
with the crime of lycanthropy in the later Middle Ages, that we can
arrive at the truth respecting that form of madness which was invested
by the superstitious with so much mystery.
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 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.
In this chapter I purpose briefly examining the conditions under which
men have been regarded as werewolves.
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 exists in children and adults,
in the gross-minded and the refined., in 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 wax 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 pouch. 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 sufferings of a wounded animal till his mother bids him “put it out
of its 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 moral 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.
As I have already observed, this passion exists in different persons in
different degrees.
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.[1]
[1] A full account of this man’s trial is given by one who was
present, in _All the Year Round_, No. 162.
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.[2]
[2] The case of Andreas Bichel is given in Lady Duff Gordon’s
_Remarkable Criminal Trials_.
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 the consequences, or to gratify it upon the brute
creation. But in earlier days, when feudal lords were supreme in their
domains, there have been frightful 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.[3] 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 occurring 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.
[3] GALL: _Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau_, tom. iv.
In the field of battle the 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[4] tells of a priest at Strasbourg, who, though rich, and
uninfluenced by envy or revenge, from exactly the same motive, killed
three persons.
[4] _Doctrine of the Mind_, p. 158.
Gall relates the case of a brother of the Duke of Bourbon, Condé, 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 his reign;
he used to watch their executions from a neighbouring 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 as frequently observed in the refined and educated.
Among the former it is manifest 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 deeps of 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[5] relates a horrible story which occurred in Hungary,
suppressing the name of the person, as it was that of a still powerful
family in the country. It illustrates what I have been saying, and
shows how trifling a matter may develope the passion in its most
hideous proportions.
[5] _Beitrage zur philosophischen Anthropologie_, Wien, 1796.
“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 spirted 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 cellar. Here they were beaten till their bodies
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.
“Occasionally 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, some 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 no 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 vas an
accomplished 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 brought 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 hyæna, preying upon the dead. His story is
given in detail in the fifteenth chapter.
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[6] gives
instances.
[6] _Observationes Medic_. lib. iv. De Gravidis.
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 her 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 neighbours asked 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[7] gives an account of a shepherd who was evidently deranged,
who killed and ate two men. Marc[8] 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 of 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.
[7] _De Anthropophago Bucano_. Jen. 1792.
[8] _Die Geistes Krankheiten_. Berlin, 1844.
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 tallyhos! at each new moon,
as though he were following a pack. In like manner, the naturally cruel
man, if the least affected 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,
conclusive 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 anointed her whole body, from the very nails of
her toes to the hair on the crown of her head, and when she was
anointed 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 a little while, when instead of any perceptible
token of feathers or wings making their appearance, my own thin skin,
alas! grew into a hard leathern 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—an ASS.”[9]
[9] APULEIUS, Sir George Head’s translation, bk. iii.
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 the
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; and yet they will
describe the circumstances with the greatest minuteness, 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 a 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, states:—“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 judgment. At the Admiralty we were always able to
detect and establish their innocence, in defiance of their own solemn
asseverations.”—(_London Judicial Gazette_, January, 1803.)