This I shall show to be an innate craving for blood implanted in certain natures, restrained under ordinary circumstances, but breaking forth occasionally, accompanied with hallucination, leading in most cases to cannibalism. I shall then give instances of persons thus afflicted, who were believed by others, and who believed themselves, to be transformed into beasts, and who, in the paroxysms of their madness, committed numerous murders, and devoured their victims. I shall next give instances of persons suffering from the same passion for blood, who murdered for the mere gratification of their natural cruelty, but who were not subject to hallucinations, nor were addicted to cannibalism. I shall also give instances of persons filled with the same propensities who murdered and ate their victims, but who were perfectly free from hallucination. CHAPTER II. LYCANTHROPY AMONG THE ANCIENTS. Definition of Lycanthropy—Marcellus Sidetes—Virgil—Herodotus—Ovid—Pliny—Agriopas—Story from Petronius—Arcadian Legends—Explanation offered. What is Lycanthropy? The change of manor woman into the form of a wolf, either through magical means, so as to enable him or her to gratify the taste for human flesh, or through judgment of the gods in punishment for some great offence. This is the popular definition. Truly it consists in a form of madness, such as may be found in most asylums. Among the ancients this kind of insanity went by the names of Lycanthropy, Kuanthropy, or Boanthropy, because those afflicted with it believed themselves to be turned into wolves, dogs, or cows. But in the North of Europe, as we shall see, the shape of a bear, and in Africa that of a hyæna, were often selected in preference. A mere matter of taste! According to Marcellus Sidetes, of whose poem {Greek _perì lukanðrw’pou_} a fragment exists, men are attacked with this madness chiefly in the beginning of the year, and become most furious in February; retiring for the night to lone cemeteries, and living precisely in the manner of dogs and wolves. Virgil writes in his eighth Eclogue:— Has herbas, atque hæc Ponto mihi lecta venena Ipse dedit Mœris; nascuntur plurima Ponto. His ego sæpe lupum fieri et se conducere sylvis Mœrim, sæpe animas imis excire sepulchris, Atque satas alio, vidi traducere messes. And Herodotus:—“It seems that the Neuri are sorcerers, if one is to believe the Scythians and the Greeks established in Scythia; for each Neurian changes himself, once in the year, into the form of a wolf, and he continues in that form for several days, after which he resumes his former shape.”—(Lib. iv. c. 105.) See also Pomponius Mela (lib. ii. c. 1) “There is a fixed time for each Neurian, at which they change, if they like, into wolves, and back again into their former condition.”