Around the middle of the 19th century, a man admitted to a French mental hospital tried to convince doctors that he was a wolf. He pulled his lips apart revealing his “wolf’s teeth”. He claimed long hair covered his body and that he had cloven feet, and demanded meals of raw meat. Yet he refused the meat offered: it wasn’t sufficiently rotten. He wanted to be released and shot in the forest. He died severely malnourished and in agony in the asylum.1.
Lycanthropy is the best known delusion of transformation into an animal. But zoanthropy encompasses a were-menagerie including dogs, cats, rhinoceroses, frogs, bees, horses, snakes, chickens, gerbils and buffalo.2 In India, family members brought a 25-year-old milkman to a psychiatric department, saying he washed his hands and genitals excessively,…
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Fortean Times (Digital) - 1 Issue, 444