The wolf is the prominent animal in the history of this belief in Europe, since in this part of the world it was the creature that caused the greatest devastation, but in India the transformation is to the tiger or the serpent, in South America to the jaguar, in Africa to the lion, the leopard, or the hyæna. In some cases this change would appear to be a terrible punishment for wrong done, in others a transformation at pleasure by wicked men seeking in the new guise to inflict terror, loss, and death. Amongst some peoples it was believed that brave and noble men became lions and eagles, while mean and treacherous ones changed to snakes, jackals, or hyænas. The belief in one form or another reappears in endless fables in circulation amongst the natives of almost every country the wide world over. Insanity, monomania, bodily disease, hydrophobia, are doubtless responsible for much in this matter. In many cases, we can scarcely doubt, the people charged with being wehr-wolves were entirely innocent of offence, the charge, like that of witchcraft, being brought against them by those who either in blind terror and superstition or some motive of craft or greed were desirous to get them removed out of the way. In some cases fierce lunatics, not as now confined in asylums, but roaming the country at large, in homicidal mania destroyed human life and became invested in the eyes of men with strange and terrible powers. Often, too, the reputed wehr-wolves under pressure of torture would in their agony confess to anything their tormentors suggested, simply as a means of obtaining some temporary respite for their sufferings, or in the ravings of delirium utter things that superstition could readily distort into admission and confession. We must remember, too, that many of the most horrible stories are narrated by writers whose veracity is by no means on a par with their credulity, and while their statements, outrageous as they are, were no doubt in most cases honestly intended, the reader must by no means suspend the right of private judgment. It is historic fact that in the year 1600 multitudes of men were seized with the hallucination that they were changed into wolves, and retreating into caves and dark recesses of the forests, issued thence howling and foaming in mad lust of blood.[31] Many helpless men, women, and children were destroyed by them during this frightful epidemic, and many hundreds of those possessed were executed on their own confession or on the testimony of the panic-stricken.