Even a man who is pure in heart
And says his prayers by night
May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright.
And says his prayers by night
May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright.
That quote of course comes from the movie 'The Wolf-man...Just about everyone is
familiar with the legend of the werewolf…traditionally, there were several ways
a person could become a werewolf...a person could be transformed by eating the
meat of a wolf that had been mixed with that of a human and that the ensuing
condition was irreversible…centuries later other stories circulated that were
said to create werewolves or perhaps more rationally explained as a condition
of clinical lycanthropy as the medical people call it…these including having a
cursed placed upon you, or by being conceived under a new moon, or by having
eaten certain herbs, or by sleeping under the full moon on a Friday (presumably
outside or this would make us all werewolves), or by drinking water that has
been touched by a wolf…this was taken quite seriously in medieval Europe…traditionally,
there are three methods one can use to cure a werewolf… medicinally (usually
via the use of wolfs bane)…surgically or by exorcism…many of the cures
advocated by the medieval medical practitioners proved to be fatal to the
patients…the idea of a wolf man has a widespread belief
in European folklore…Bavaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria were the hotbeds of
this tale.